Reviews 2013
Reviews 2013
✭✭✭✭✩
by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Jackie Maxwell
Shaw Festival, Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
May 10-October 19, 2013
Undershaft: “There are two things necessary to Salvation … Money and gunpowder.”
The Shaw Festival’s new production of Major Barbara is the most clearly directed staging I’ve seen. Jackie Maxwell’s insight into the structure of Shaw’s 1905 masterpiece illuminates the whole work revealing it as a modern day fairy tale, a moral fable and a love story all at once. This may be the only unadulterated play by Shaw at the Festival this year, but it proves yet again what a visionary Shaw was and what a stroke of genius it was for Brian Doherty to found a festival dedicated to his work.
One reason why Shaw’s plays continue to appeal to modern audiences it that while they be seem to be critiques of specific social and political problems, they are often based on narrative structures derived from myth, folklore or fairy tale. Shaw’s Pygmalion (1913) gives away its mythological origins in its title. One of the narrative structures in Major Barbara is the “missing heir” motif, obvious, for example in the Biblical story of David, where Saul has to choose his heir from among the descendants of another man and chooses the least likely candidate, a shepherd.
In Major Barbara, Shaw concocts a story where the arms-making business of the Andrew Undershaft must be passed on to a “foundling” rather than to any of his own children. The chosen foundling must then take on the name of Andrew Undershaft, just as in ancient kingship rights the new ruler would take on the previous ruler’s name, thus rendering it eternal. At the start of Shaw’s play the current Andrew Undershaft (Benedict Campbell) is worried that he had not yet discovered his “foundling” and, as in common in old tales, the chosen heir turns out to be the least likely candidate – in this case Adolphus Cusins (Graeme Somerville), a professor of ancient Greek.
A parallel to this “missing heir” is the missing favourite child (as in the Biblical story of Joseph and his brothers). In this case Undershaft’s daughter Barbara (Nicole Underhay), who has completely turned against her father’s wealth and joined the Salvation Army to help the poor. While he admires her zeal, to win her back he must destroy her naive idealism that only treats the symptoms of poverty but not the cause. Once he has disillusioned her and chosen the man who loves her as his heir, we are left to wonder whether her love can withstand the shock of having the man she loves become the new Andrew Undershaft.
By focussing on the “missing heir” story, Maxwell lends meaning to many scenes which in other productions seem incidental. Undershaft’s wife, Lady Britomart (Laurie Paton) has a chat with Undershaft’s son Stephen (Ben Sanders), who thinks he should be his heir, but it’s quite clear he is useless at anything. Barbara’s sister Sarah (Ijeoma Emesowum) is engaged to Charles Lomax (Wade Bogert-O’Brien), but his formulaic comments mark him as an idiot. Maxwell shows that Undershaft and Adolphus have a rapport as soon as they meet and she charts how this rapport grows stronger throughout the play. Only Undershaft’s belief that Adolphus is not a foundling prevents his choosing him earlier. This is in marked contrast to previous productions of the play where Undershaft’s decision in Act 4 comes as a shocking surprise as is Adolphus’ acceptance. Here Maxwell have carefully paved the way so that Undershaft’s choice appears the logical conclusion of all that has gone before.
Maxwell’s method also allows her to link Undershaft’s growing affinity for Barbara’s sweetheart to his shattering of her illusions. Barbara has to accommodate herself to both realities in her conversation with Adolphus at the very end of the play, but Maxwell is able to shape the action so that we see the tide, both personal and ideological, progressively turning against Barbara until she is forced to redefine her goals.
What helps Maxwell realize her vision of the play is an exceptionally fine cast. Nicole Underhay is a vibrant Major Barbara, who preaches with all the fervour of a new convert. While we never doubt her sincerity, Underhay manages to suggest ever so subtly, perhaps through the loftiness of her demeanour, that Barbara is also an Earl’s granddaughter dabbling. From this height, however, she is brought low by the realization that the Salvation Army can’t afford to refuse donations from businesses she thinks are immoral like distilleries and arms manufacturers. With this revelation Underhay’s Barbara loses all her cheerfulness and acts as if she’s had the air knocked out of her. Even if Barbara has been unrealistic, Underhay still draws our sympathy as someone who has lost her ideals.
Benedict Campbell, who played Anthony Undershaft in the Shaw’s last production in 2005, gives a deliberately understated performance. His Undershaft is not given to hectoring or brow-beating. Rather, Campbell imbues him with the unshakeable belief that that his views alone are right and need be expressed only through firm, quiet statement of the facts. Playing Undershaft this way with no hint or megalomania or even pride only serves to make him a more imposing opponent. It also helps make the mutual respect between Undershaft and Cusins less improbable and the admiration Stephen finally grants him less unlikely.
With this key triangle of personalities so well thought through, the play runs along smoothly like a well-oiled Wankel engine. Maxwell shows how all the other characters relate to this triangle through similarity or contrast. Principal among these is Lady Britomart. Laurie Paton makes certain she lives up to her namesake in Spencer’s The Faerie Queene (1590), where she represents English virtue, specifically English military power. This is particularly obvious in the first scene where Lady Britomart hilariously lays siege to her ineffectual son Stephen, asking his advice but badgering him until he tells her what she wants to hear. Paton maintains this delightful façade of imperious innocence throughout the play.
Ben Sanders does not fall into the trap of playing Undershaft’s son Stephen simply as a useless twit. It’s part of being a British aristocrat that learning a trade would be thought beneath him and it’s clear that Lady Britomart’s domineering nature has never let him think for himself. It is to Sanders’s credit that he never makes Stephen an intentionally comic character. Instead, we tend to view him not so much as a fool as a victim of circumstances, and this only helps make his reconciliation with Undershaft at the end more believable.
On the other hand, Charles Lomax, Barbara’s brother-in-law, is meant to be a blithering idiot, at least in public. If there is any subtlety in him, Wade Bogert-O’Brien’s performance banishes it by speaking his part several decibels louder than everyone else. Ijeoma Emesowum plays Barbara’s sister Sarah with a quiet grace. Her satisfaction with her family’s wealth and position are less a negative comment on her as a foil to Barbara’s turmoil and dissatisfaction.
In the world of the Salvation Army, Alana Hibbert gives Barbara’s co-worker Jenny Hill a natural sense of humility that contrasts with Barbara’s perpetually goal-oriented activity. James Pendarves gives a fine performance as Bill Walker, whose violence and brutishness momentarily banish comedy from the scene. When he returns to the mission, as Barbara predicted he would, Pendarves excels in contrasting the threats Bill continues to make with an inner turmoil that he can’t bear to acknowledge. As Rummy Mitchens and Snobby Price, Catherine McGregor and Billy Lake do fine work as people who habituate Barbara’s mission under false pretences – a fact that shows her idealism is misplaced even before her father’s visit – while Peter Krantz’s sympathetic Peter Shirley, who has lost his job to a younger man, provides a counterexample to Rummy and Snobby of one of the honest poor.
This is one of Shaw’s greatest plays and it really does deserve to be mounted in the Festival Theatre. This is especially true of Maxwell’s insightful, superbly acted new production that sheds such light on Shaw’s masterpiece it ought to be seen by the largest possible audience.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: (top) Nicole Underhay (far left) and Graeme Somerville (centre) with cast of Major Barbara; (upper middle) Nicole Underhay and Graeme Somerville. ©Emily Cooper. (Lower middle) Ben Sanders and Benedict Campbell. ©2013 David Cooper.
For tickets, visit www.shawfest.com.
2013-08-09
Major Barbara