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<b>by Oliver Goldsmith, directed by Martha Henry
Stratford Festival, Avon Theatre, Stratford
June 4-October 10, 2015
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Prologue: “The Comic Muse, long sick, is now a-dying!”
Oliver Goldsmith’s comedy <i>She Stoops to Conquer</i> (1773) is one of the best-loved and most-performed English plays of the Restoration and 18th century. Stratford’s new production is its third since 1972, one which was so popular it was revived the next year. The present production is mediocre at best, pretty to look at but marred by an uneven cast, languid pacing and directorial ideas that that obscure rather than clarify the play’s themes.
In the mid-18th century comedy had taken such a turn towards gravity and sentimentality that the plays could be called comedies only because they had happy endings. Goldsmith wrote <i>She Stoops</i> deliberately to counter this trend to so-called “weeping comedy” (or <i>comédie larmoyante</i>) and bring back the “laughing comedy” (or <i>comédie riante</i>) of old. That is why the Prologue to <i>She Stoops,</i> written by David Garrick (spoken here by André Morin), says that “The Comic Muse, long sick, is now a-dying!” but offers hope in the form of the author, who was also a physician: “One hope remains—hearing the maid was ill, / A Doctor comes this night to show his skill.”
The plot is not complicated. Richard Hardcastle (Joseph Ziegler) and his wife Dorothy (Lucy Peacock) live happily with their daughter Kate (Maev Beaty), Tony Lumpkin (Karack Osborn), Dorothy’s son from a previous marriage, and Constance Neville (Sara Farb) Dorothy’s niece. Hardcastle has arranged for Kate to marry Charles Marlow (Brad Hodder), the son of his best friend, and she is quite amenable to the idea. Dorothy wants Tony to marry Constance to keep Constance’s fortune in jewels in the family. Tony and Constance do not like each other and have other plans.
It so happens that Marlow and his friend George Hastings (Tyrone Savage) stop by a tavern where Tony is drinking. Realizing who the travellers are, Tony decides to play a joke on his stepfather and sends the two men to Hardcastle’s house telling them it is an inn and that the eccentric owner likes to mingle with his guests. Naturally, Hardcastle is astounded by his guests’ rudeness in ignoring him and expecting services from him. When Constance sees Hastings, we learn he is her secret lover and they plan to elope.
Marlow has a harder time. Being brought up in all-male institutions, he is extremely shy around women of his own class, but quite uninhibited around lower class women. Kate realizes that to win Marlow, she will have to “stoop to conquer” by taken on the role of a maid in the “inn” to see what Marlow is really like. Marlow’s double standard in how he treats women is a critique of the upper class in general and is shown in how Marlow and Hastings treat Hardcastle when they think his is only an innkeeper.
Director Martha Henry gives the play a leisurely andante pacing from start to finish so that no energy or tension ever builds up to make the comedy more engaging. When Marlow and Hastings arrive at the Hardcastles’ “inn”, she has Marlow remove his shoes and hose to dry his hose by the fire and walk about the house in are feet, only to be embarrassed when he is introduced to Kate.
This is wrong on many counts. First, the play is from and set in the 18th century and is about class consciousness. No aristocrat would remove such private clothing as hose in the public room of a inn. Children of peasants might go about barefoot outdoors, but an aristocrat would never do so indoors, shoes and hose being a sign of wealth. Henry has Marlow meet Kate when he had one stocking on and one off. Henry thus distracts us from Marlow’s real source of embarrassment (Kate’s class) to an embarrassment Henry has invented (his deshabille). By doing so she ruins the most important scene in the play that gives us evidence of Marlow’s dual attitude toward women.
Henry also muddies the point of the subplot involving Constance’s jewels. Every time the jewel box is opened, a light shines n the faces of the opener and we hear a sound cue of a glissando on a chime tree. This may be funny the first time, but certainly becomes tedious by the sixth. It also gives indiscriminate importance to the jewels. Hastings says he’ll marry Constance without them. They are most important to the covetous Mrs. Hardcastle, but Henry’s added light-and-sound show with the jewels obscures that distinction.
Goldsmith’s prose is a model of clarity. It is still more formal than modern speech but not as knotty as the dramatic prose of the Restoration comedies that preceded it nor as long-winded as that in the comedies of Shaw that would follow it. The pity in the present production is how few of the cast had mastered it. Only Beaty, Peacock, Savage and Ziegler were able to make Goldsmith’s formality sound absolutely natural. The others spoke in a declamatory style that only made the prose sound more artificial.
Even then, only Beaty is able to give a fully satisfying account of her role. She has moved beyond mastering the speech to clearly interpreting her role and distinguished the aristocratic daughter Kate from the barmaid Kate very well. Savage is on his way to providing a full interpretation of Hastings’ character but had not arrived. Peacock, perhaps sensing that the comedy was not getting as many laughs as it should, gave way to overacting and mugging. Ziegler, hampered by a restricted vocal range, was unable to show Hardcastle’s increasing anger at the impudence of his guests since he could not increase the volume of his displeasure from one outrage to the next.
Brad Hodder does his best as Marlow but never once appeared at ease in the role. Sara Farb still looks as if she is reciting lines from memory and gives no clue as to how sincere or flippant Constance is. Karack Osborne declaims his lines all at the same volume and as a result gives us only a loud and unnuanced Tony Lumpkin.
Douglas Paraschuk’s attractive set on a revolve is a clever way of dealing with the four locations required in the play. Charlotte Dean’s period costumes are handsome although Sara Farb is swallowed up by her frock when she sits down and Mrs. Hardcastle’s wig is such a fright it is hard to believe even she could think it fashionable.
It would have been good if the Festival could have followed up the great success of George Farquhar’s <i><a href="perma://BLPageReference/54465FA6-E1EE-4FA4-9EDC-984D05D9965E">The Beaux’ Stratagem</a></i> (1707) of last year with an equally successful 18th-century comedy this year. But the Farquhar had a much more experienced cast in all the roles than does <i>She Stoops</i>. It’s too bad that the Goldsmith should have been so slighted since it is a play that can be truly wonderful and heart-warming rather than merely fitfully amusing.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Brad Hodder, Joseph Ziegler, André Morin and Tyrone Savage; Meav Beaty as Kate Hardcastle; Lucy Peacock as Mrs. Hardcastle. ©2015 David Hou.
For tickets, visit <a href="http://www.stratfordfestival.ca">www.stratfordfestival.ca</a>.
<b>2015-06-10</b>
<b>She Stoops to Conquer</b>