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by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Brenhan McKibben

Red One Theatre Collective and the Clean Shavian Co-op, Campbell House Museum, Toronto

July 24-August 4, 2012

Lady Magnesia: “Look into your conscience: look into your stomach.”

Those in the mood for a neo-Edwardian soirée should know that they can have one right here in Toronto without trekking all the way down to Niagara-on-the-Lake.  The Red One Theatre Collective is presenting a civilized evening of theatre and music beginning with one of George Bernard Shaw funniest one-act plays, Passion, Poison and Petrifaction, or The Fatal Gazogene.  If you know Shaw only from such major works as Saint Joan or Major Barbara, you may be surprised to find that he also wrote playlets like this that come across like a Masterpiece Mystery as imagined by Monty Python.      

Shaw wrote Gazogene in 1905, a send-up of current melodramas, to be performed in a booth in Regent’s Park for the benefit of The Actors’ Orphanage.  Even Shaw called it “a colossal success”.  While Shaw Festival Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell has taken the festival in many new directions, one thing that has gone missing are the production of Shaw’s numerous one-act plays and sketches that make up the more than 60 works he wrote for the stage.  Maxwell’s predecessor Christopher Newton deliberately tried to work his way through these short plays, including such rarities as How He Lied to Her Husband and The Fascinating Foundling in 1984, Augustus Does His Bit in 1987 and Shakes versus Shav and A Glimpse of Reality in 1989.  The last time the festival stage Gazogene was in 1998 and the director and cast didn’t capture the loopy spirit of the play as well as Red One.  The Festival has included these plays in its Reading Series but seems to have given up on staging them.  Therefore, the Red One production is likely your only chance to see a work from the purely farcical side of Shaw’s output for some time. 

Brenhan McKibben’s production is lively and very physical.  The ballroom on the second floor of the Campbell House stands in for bed-sitting room of Lady Magnesia Fitztollemache (Lorna Wright), who is attended by her faithful servant Phyllis (Kendall Wright).  (Lady Magnesia’s surname likely derives from the German verb “tollmachen” meaning “to drive one crazy”.)  When a cuckoo clock strikes sixteen we know we’re in a world that would later be called absurdist.  Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano from 1950 begins when the clock strikes seventeen.)    Sounds of thunder and angels singing “Oh, won’t you come home, Bill Bailey?” have set her nerves on edge and Phyllis has the foreboding she may never see her mistress alive again.

Indeed, after Phyllis withdraws, a would-be murderer creeps in complete with cloak and dagger purposing to do in Lady Magnesia.  It turns out to be her own husband, Lord George (David Reale).  What foils his plan is the arrival of Adolphus Bastable (David Tompa), whom Lord George believes is his wife’s lover.  To rid himself of his presumed rival, Lord George poisons Adolphus with a tainted gazogene, now known better as a seltzer bottle.  When Lady Magnesia assures Lord George of her undivided love, George reveals that the only antidote to the poison is lime and the only ready supply of lime in the vicinity is the plaster ceiling which they force the writhing Adolphus to eat with little success.  Does Adolphus survive?  What does “petrifaction” in the title refer to? And what about the nosy Landlady (Kat Germain) downstairs?  To find out these and other answers you have to see the show.

To make farce work the characters involved in the action must take what they do absolutely seriously no matter how ridiculous it may seem.  Indeed, the seriousness of the characters’ attitudes heightens the humour.  In this Lorna Wright and David Reale have the necessary approach down best of all the troupe.  Neither lets on for a moment that what they are doing might seem slightly deranged to an outsider.  Kendall Wright comes close to this approach but tends to extend her wailing rather too long in parting from her mistress and later in having to appear in paper curlers.  Tompa is clearly having a great time, but he real must suppress his constant smile that contradicts the gravity of his character’s situation, especially at the very end.  Germain give us a fairly broad portrait of the lower-class Landlady and in quite a clever way plays the two other characters of the play, a Policeman and a Doctor.

Staceylee Turner provides the handsome period costumes and props and Melissa Joakim makes clever use of the limited lighting resources.  I never would have thought of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana as suitable music for this play, but McKibben proves that it works surprising well.

The doors of the Campbell House open at 8:30pm for drinks before the show and allows the audience to inspect the first floor and basement of the house built in 1822 and the oldest remaining building from the original town of York.  The 30-minute show begins at 9pm after which there is an intermission.  Red One has lined up a series of musical guests to complete the second half of the programme.  Opening night featured the Linden String Quartet, but the series covers a wide range of musical styles listed at http://secureaseat.com/gazogene. 

As a theatre critic I would have welcomed a second short Shaw after intermission, but the combination of theatricals and music is what gives the event the feel of an evening at an English country house.  Red One has essayed many theatrical styles, but let’s hope the pure fun of this production encourages them to mount other Shavian rarities in the future.     

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Lorna Wright and David Tompa. ©2012 Red One Theatre Collective.

For tickets, visit http://secureaseat.com/gazogene.