Reviews 2015
Reviews 2015
✭✭✭✩✩
by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Jim Mezon
Shaw Festival, Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
May 14-October 25, 2015
Valentine: “Why was I tempted? Because Nature was in deadly earnest with me when I was in jest with her”
The Shaw Festival is currently presenting the seventh production in its history of Shaw’s 1899 comedy You Never Can Tell, making it the company’s most-produced play by Shaw. (Arms and the Man, Major Barbara, Misalliance and Pygmalion all come in next at six productions each.) One problem with such frequent productions – one suffered far more at the Stratford Festival than at the Shaw – is that frequent Festival-goers are likely to remember a past production while seeing a new one. It happens that the Festival’s previous production of You Never in 2005 was one of of its best ever, and the one before that in 1995 was not far behind. Compared with these earlier productions, the present staging comes across as rather tepid even though it still features some excellent performances.
The light-hearted plot is filled with deliberately improbable coincidences. Mrs. Lanfrey Clandon (Tara Rosling), celebrated feminist and author of self-help books, returns from of self-imposed exile in Madeira with her older daughter Gloria (Julia Course), a budding feminist in her own right, and her boisterous twins Philip (Stephen Jackman-Torkoff) and Dolly (Jennifer Dzialoszynski). Mrs. Clandon left her husband 18 years ago and so loathes him she has told her children nothing about him. Now she seeks advice from the family solicitor M’Comas (Peter Krantz) about what to do. The children unknowingly invite their long-lost father Fergus Crampton (Patrick McManus) to lunch with them along with his penniless tenant, the dentist Valentine (Grey Powell), who instantly falls in love with Gloria. The twins, who have no concept of English propriety, innocently break social codes and help establish the carnivalesque atmosphere that imbues the action.
In 1973 You Never Can Tell was the inaugural production at the new Festival Theatre, and, until now, that is where the Festival has staged it. Yet, as with the Festival’s experiment of presenting Shaw’s Major Barbara on the Royal George stage in 2013, the play feels cramped in the smaller space. You Never Can Tell is set for the most part at a seaside hotel and requires a feeling of lightness and space to capture that atmosphere. Designer Leslie Frankish is unable to achieve this in the Royal George. Her exit to the beach is through a trapdoor at the front of the stage which hardly suits the setting. The play is about the meeting of the inhabitants of two islands – the free-wheeling Clandon children from Madeira and the hide-bound residents of Britain. The sea is an important image of the element that both joins and separates two sides of the family and two ways of life. Not capturing that idea is a serious failure.
Powell has shown his abilities in serious drama many times, but here he brings the same complexity of character to a figure often played simply as a man made foolish by love. Powell brings introspection to the character which only increases the humour as Powell shows an ongoing battle within Valentine between his instincts and his reason.
Director Jim Mezon’s best idea is to have the twins Philip and Dolly played by two people who could not look more different. Stephen
Jackman-Torkoff is tall and black and Jennifer Dzialoszynski is short and white. Nevertheless, they work so perfectly together that we soon regard their difference in appearance as just another of the eccentricities of the play. The innocence of their worldview and their inherent love of frivolity brings the zest of untrammelled fun into the play. The only difficulty is that their playing, which would suit the Festival stage perfectly, is too big for the Royal George.
Given how familiar the director and the rest of his cast are with Shaw, it is strange that they seldom find all there is in their characters. As Gloria, the twin’s older sister, Julia Course should be an exact match for Powell’s Valentine in intellect and energy. Here Course makes Gloria a rather wan imitation of her mother without showing that a corresponding battle between instinct and reason is taking place in her as well as in the more expressive Valentine.
Patrick McManus unaccountably gives us a one-note Mr. Crampton, so grumpy and growling it is near impossible to see how he and Mrs. Clandon could ever have been married. Pater Krantz, whose performances are normally marked by their subtlety, here seems to be trying far too hard to be funny as Mrs. Clandon’s solicitor M’Comas.
The wonderful Peter Millard should be the ideal actor to play the calmly philosophical waiter William whose catchphrase gives the play its title. Yet, surprisingly he seems to keep the character at arm’s length without bringing him fully to life. As the prime commentator on the action of the play, William’s warmth and understanding of how the world works should gradually come to win over all the characters. Here Millard lends William an odd coolness. In a truly fine production we should be able to see how his imperious lawyer son Bohun is really just a much more vehement chip off the old block. Here Jeff Meadows, got up to look like a pantomime swami, comes off more as dictator than philosopher thus making it difficult to see how William and he could ever be father and son.
Those who have never seen the play before will doubtless find it quite amusing. Regular Shaw Festival-goers, however, will know that the play has been much better performed, designed and directed than it is here. The confines of the Royal George Theatre too often give the play the feel of cats fighting in a box whereas at the Festival Theatre the play always felt like boxed-up cats learning to enjoy what freedom is for the first time.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Tara Rosling as Mrs. Clandon, Peter Krantz as M’Comas, Stephen Jackman-Torkoff as Philip and Jennifer Dzialoszynski as Dolly; Julia Course as Gloria and Grey Powell as Valentine. ©2015 David Cooper.
2015-08-24
You Never Can Tell