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by Philip Barry, directed by Dennis Garnhum

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

June 7-October 26, 2014

Tracy: “The time to make up your mind about people is never”

The Shaw Festival has given the sophisticated American comedy The Philadelphia Story a wonderfully stylish production.  If people know the title of the play it is likely from the famous 1940 film based on it directed by George Cukor starring Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant and Jimmy Stewart.  People will likely also know the plot from the 1956 movie musical High Society based on the same play starring Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.  In a strange turn of events, the Shaw Festival presented the 1987 stage musical High Society based on the film in 2006 and only now has got around to presenting Philip Barry’s 1939 play that is the original source for the two films and the stage musical. 

The action takes place in the Lord family mansion near Philadelphia on the day before and day of the wedding of the wealthy, beautiful socialite Tracy Lord (Moya O’Connell).  It has been two years since she divorced fellow upper class yachtsman C. K. Dexter Haven (Gray Powell), with whom she had impulsively eloped.  She divorced him because she couldn’t bear his self-acknowledged flaws like his tendency to drink to excess.  Now she is about to be married to the self-made businessman George Kittredge (Thom Marriott), whom she feels will be the right choice for security and social advancement. 

It so happens that the Lord family is not entirely free of scandal.  A newspaper is about to publish an exposé of an affair that Tracy’s father Seth (Juan Chioran) has had with an actress.  To prevent this, Tracy’s brother Sandy (Jeff Meadows) has allowed two reporters, Mike Connor (Patrick McManus) and Liz Imbrie (Fiona Byrne), to get the inside story of Tracy’s society wedding.  The plan is that the newspaperman will publish Mike and Liz’s “Philadelphia story” instead of the exposé on Seth.

Further complicating the plot, Tracy’s kid sister Dinah (Tess Benger) thinks Dexter should attend the wedding and invites him without anyone else’s knowledge.  By the end of Act 1, Tracy has three men vying for her affection – George, Dexter and Mike, who is so overwhelmed by Tracy’s goddess-like presence that he forgets his habitual disdain for the upper classes.

The Philadelphia Story is not a collection of one-liners and put-downs as so many new comedies seem to be, but rather is a comedy of character focussed on Tracy, who comes to realize that her demand for perfection in other people is really a flaw.  Nobody, including her, is above making a mistake and the mistake she makes at the end of Act 1 is a doozy. 

Moya O’Connell in simply radiant as Tracy Lord.  O’Connell’s natural charisma makes it easily understandable why men fall in love with Tracy as soon as they

meet her.  At the same time O’Connell projects a cool, judgmental aura that explains why men speak of adoring Tracy as a goddess rather than loving her as a human being.  O’Connell is excellent at charting Tracy’s path to self-awareness, of plunging herself into the midst of confusion in order to find the value of forgiving others and herself.  It’s a performance of the kind of range and depth one might expect in a drama rather than a comedy, but then it is that very complexity that makes Tracy as a character and Barry’s play as a comedy so unusually rich.

Tracy’s three love interests are all nicely contrasted.  As Dexter, Gray Powell conveys an inward ardour and fuller understanding of himself and Tracy that makes us root for him from the first though the notion of the divorced couple getting back together seems so hopeless.  Patrick McManus makes Mike’s comic turnabout from advocate of socialism to adorer of a socialite completely believable.  As George, Thom Marriott creates a fine comic portrait of an egotist for whom Tracy will be another trophy on his way to success. 

Among the women, newcomer Tess Benger is a delight as Tracy’s kid sister who is full of curiosity about the world of adults she is about to enter yet who already has an intuition about how things should work that is more mature than her years.  Fiona Byrne’s Liz is the down-to-earth contrast to the high-flying Tracy.  Much of what we know of Liz comes not from what she says but how she reacts and Byrne is such a fine actor that we can see clearly without her saying a word how Liz holds a torch for Mike and how she steels herself for yet another disappointment when he and Tracy suddenly seem to be an item.  Sharry Flett immediately conveys a natural warmth and sense of understanding that contrasts with Tracy’s cool willfulness.  Later we see that her forgiving Seth for his affair has only made her a stronger person and sets her up as a model for Tracy to follow.

The principals receives fine support from Juan Chioran as an outwardly imperious but inwardly humbled Seth, Jeff Meadows as the wily, game-playing Sandy and Ric Reid as the comically undisciplined Uncle Willy.

Director Dennis Garnhum directs the show with a masterful sense of pacing.  In his hands the entire play becomes one beautifully managed comic accelerando.  The action begins quietly and slowly enough, but it soon picks up speed so that by the end things are happening so rapidly you can’t blink or you’ll miss something.  Garnhum’s ability to impel the action forward so smoothly is aided immensely by William Schmuck’s clever design.

Just as Tracy’s love life is divided into three, so is Schmuck set.  Three parts each on its own revolve combine to create the airy, elegant, gold-and-silver sitting room of the first and fourth acts whose neoclassical design reeks of old money.  For the second and third acts the three parts revolve 180º to create a vine-covered garden scene.  Garnhum has so carefully choreographed the scenes changes that they are a pleasure to watch in themselves.  All together, the direction, design and acting in this show are of such a high calibre it’s hard to imagine a better stage production of The Philadelphia Story will ever come along.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photos: Thom Marriott, Moya O’Connell, Patrick McManus, Fiona Byrne and Gray Powell, ©2014 David Cooper; Juan Chioran, Moya O’Connell and Gray Powell, ©2014 Emily Cooper. 

For tickets, visit www.shawfest.com.