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by Matthew Barber, directed by Jackie Maxwell

Shaw Festival, Festival Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake

July 13-October 26, 2013

“A Play that ‘would make Pollyanna blush’”

The Shaw Festival’s current production of Enchanted April is a pleasant piece of fluff.  People will most likely know the story for the 1991 film by Mike Newell starring Joan Plowright and Miranda Richardson.  American writer Matthew Barber’s stage adaptation, like the film, is based on the 1922 novel The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim (1866-1941) and was nominated for the 2003 Tony Award for Best Play and won the 2003 John Gassner Awards for Outstanding New American Play.  It’s an amiable though insubstantial story where mood is much more important than plot.  Fortunately, Jackie Maxwell’s sensitive direction and the totally committed acting of the principals almost make us forget how mindless the whole thing is.

The slight story concerns Lotty Wilton (Moya O’Connell), who comes across an advertisement in The Times “To Those who Appreciate Wistaria and Sunshine” for a castle to let for the month of April in Italy.  She intuits, and is right, that the quiet, restrained woman sitting at the next table in her women’s club has just read the same advert.  Lotty knows the woman only by sight from church where her private name for her is “the Disappointed Madonna”.  Nevertheless, the impulsive Lotty strikes up a conversation with the woman, who turns out to be called Rose Arnott (Tara Rosling), and convinces her, over her hesitations and objections, that they two should rent the castle.

When we see the home lives of Lotty and Rose, we see why a vacation away from their husbands, unconventional as that might be, would do them good.  Lotty’s husband Mellersh (Jeff Daniels) is a very proper and stuffy lawyer whose insistence of punctuality and planning contrasts completely with Lotty’s inherent spontaneity and imagination.  Rose’s husband Frederick (Patrick Galligan) used to be a poet but now is quite happy making money from writing salacious biographies of historical figures under a pseudonym.  His frequent absences at society parties leave Rose home alone.

To afford the rent, Lotty and Rose realize they will need two more women to share the castle.  The two they find are first Lady Caroline Bramble (Marla McLean), a young, free-wheeling socialite who wants to take a break from the London whirl, and second, the elderly Mrs. Graves (Donna Belleville), who knew Tennyson when she was young and has maintained Victorian moral standards into the present. 

Once all four arrive at the castle in Act 2, Lady Caroline and Mrs. Graves do, as we suspected, not get along.  Mrs. Graves also has difficulties with the wily, non-English-speaking servant and cook Costanza (Sharry Flett).  Mrs. Graves would clearly be happy to control the behaviour of all the castle’s inhabitants, except that Lady Caroline is oblivious to the old woman and Lotty and Rose pluck up enough courage to insist that they do as they like.  What finally turns the tide is the appearance of the young, handsome British owner of the castle, Antony Wilding (Kevin McGarry), whose doting on Mrs. Graves immediately softens her rigour.  After just a week, Lotty decides that she and Rose should invite their husbands to join them to experience for themselves the healing nature of the castle.

As drama Act 1 is superior to Act 2 and director Jackie Maxwell and designer William Schmuck treat the two acts in completely different ways.  In Act 1, Schmuck has created a long drab space where the names of battles of World War 1 are written everywhere.  The point, of course, is that London is still imbued with the tragedies of the war.  Two tables and various chairs serve as tables in the women’s club, tables in the homes of Lotty and Rose and finally as a train compartment.  The big scenic effect at the start of Act 2 is when the drama train compartment separates to reveal the huge fixed set of the castle behind it.  The effect drew a round of applause and admiring oohs, but I felt the castle set looked rather contrived and gaudy and more like a stage set of a castle than an actual castle.  Ironically, London which is supposed to be dull has the most imaginative set and multiple use of props to create different locations, while once we move to Italy the non-naturalistic techniques of Act 1 are replaced by standard naturalism.

Act 2 is unsatisfying in the way Barber repeatedly sets up potential conflicts then knocks them down before anything develops.  First, there is the rising tension between Mrs. Graves and the other women that Mr. Wilding’s arrival suddenly defuses.  Then Mr. Arnott arrives and we see that he and Lady Caroline could very well have had some ongoing dalliance.  That problem is all-too-conveniently forgotten once Mr. Arnott sees his wife.  Then Mr. Wilton arrives and thinks he may be able to pursue some legal business with Lady Caroline, but that, too, is forgotten.  We never do find out what the mysterious cause is of Lady Caroline’s frequent headaches, drinking and missed meals, except that it’s nothing so terrible that a turn in the garden with Mr. Wilding won’t cure.

Ultimately the story is a forerunner of a play like Shirley Valentine (1986), except with a group instead of an individual as the protagonist.  The spurious message in both is that all a Briton needs to sort out unhappiness in life is a long vacation in a sunny clime. The notion that people can’t really escape their problems simply by moving, as, say, in The Grapes of Wrath (1938), is never mentioned as even a distant possibility.  Barber, like Lotty, focusses on the “enchanted” nature of the place to waive all objections and to prevent the action from ever becoming serious. 

What carries us along are the vibrant performances of the cast.  Chief among these is O’Connell’s Lotty, whom she plays as a lovably dotty visionary whose sheer enthusiasm can sweep all objections away.  Rosling does fine work as Rose, suggesting a secret torment that she can’t bring herself to utter which causes her severe outlook on life.  Her sudden turnaround when her husband arrives in Italy comes as a complete surprise.

Marla McLean’s Lady Caroline remains mysterious and aloof even after we discover her secret.  This is primarily because Barber has not bothered to fill out her character.  Her sudden change of heart is also unexplained.  Barber is much more interested in Mrs. Graves, brought to vivid life by Donna Belleville.  At least Barber supplies her with signs of more incremental changes in outlook than he gives the others.     

  

Meadows gives us a caricature of a stodgy Englishman, while Galligan at least gives us glimpse of a writer who has sold out and has some slight recognition that he has done so.  Sharry Flett’s Italian servant is also a standard caricature, but is so lively and amusing we can’t really object too much.  McGarry cuts a dashing figure, but he really must learn to do a British accent if he wants his character to be taken seriously. 

There are times when a play that is not intellectually or emotionally challenging is just what you want, and if so Enchanted April will fill the bill.  Its main characteristic is unexamined enthusiasm, one that Rose says of Lotty “would make Pollyanna blush”.  What is so odd is that a play that encouraged an audience not to think should be staged at the Shaw Festival at all and in its largest theatre.  While I was happy to see a play where Moya O’Connell did not shoot herself at the end or where Tara Rosing was not burned at the stake, there must be plays out there with more substance than this that would be just as entertaining and dramatically more satisfying.        

              

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: (top) Moya O’Connel and Tara Rosling; (middle) Marla McLean.  ©2013 Emily Cooper.

For tickets, visit www.shawfest.com.