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by Richard Brinsley Sheridan, directed by Antoni Cimolino

Stratford Festival, Avon Theatre, Stratford

June 3-October 21, 2017

Mrs. Candour: “Tale bearers are as bad as the tale makers”

Visitors to Stratford who do not look beyond Shakespeare or the musicals for entertainment should know they may be missing out of some of the best shows of the season.  Prime among these so far is the sumptuous production of The School for Scandal, a comedy from 1777 by Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816).  Not only is it one of the greatest of 18th-century English comedies but its direction and acting are close to perfection.  The play’s theme of the profligate spreading of unfounded rumour also makes it strangely relevant to concerns about “fake news” today.

The “school” of the title refers to the group of gossipmongers who gather about the wealthy young widow Lady Sneerwell (Maev Beaty).  She herself was made unhappy during her marriage by whispers of scandal and she now plans to make as many people as possible unhappy by the same means.  She employs the spy Snake (Anusree Roy) both to gather information on people and to spread false information about people to cause them distress.  Among her group are Mrs. Candour (Brigit Wilson), Sir Benjamin Backbite (Tom Rooney) and his uncle Crabtree (Rod Beattie).  Together they gleefully disparage all their acquaintances and rejoice in their failings. 

Their newest member is Lady Teazle (Shannon Taylor), a young woman who has married Sir Peter Teazle (Geraint Wyn Davies), a good-hearted man who is old enough to be her father.  Sir Peter is ward to the heiress Maria (Monice Peter).  Sir Peter would like Maria to marry the superficially respectable Joseph Surface, but Maria is in love with Joseph’s younger brother Charles. 

Since Joseph wants to marry Maria for her money, he forms a league with Lady Sneerwell to spread rumours that Charles is having an affair with Lady Teazle.  The irony is that Lady Sneerwell is herself drawn to Joseph and in conspiring to help him marry Maria is thus thwarting her own desires.  Joseph, for his part, needs Lady Sneerwell’s help and so plays along with her flirting. 

The event that will eventually clear up all these intrigues is the arrival of Sir Oliver Surface (Joseph Ziegler), the rich uncle of the two Surface brothers.  Having heard rumours about both, he and Sir Peter devise a plan for Sir Oliver to interview the two incognito and discover their true natures.

The play is filled with satire of character types, farcical situations and the kind of clever dialogue and epigrammatic wit one wouldn’t see again on the English stage until Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest (1895).  Julie Fox’s ingenious set works like a machine in easily transforming itself from one location to another.  Its side walls slide forward to cover the set opening to provide a narrow acting space right in front of the footlights suitable for many of the gossips’ clandestine discussions in corridors.  Fox’s set has so fine a design in itself that Nick Bottomley’s projections of the text of advertisements and newspaper headlines during scene changes is really unnecessary. 

Fox gives the members of the “school for scandal” wigs to emphasize their warped personalities and false sense of fashion.  Lady Sneerwell’s looks like a beehive, Mrs. Candour’s like saddlebags, Backbite’s like a candle flame and Snake’s, unsurprisingly, like some sort of reptile.

At the very heart of the play is Sir Peter Teazle played with wonderful warmth and humour by Geraint Wyn Davies. Teazle is an old bachelor who found love late in life, but it is love.  Even the way that his young wife vexes him he finds charming.  To convey the humour of a good-hearted man aware of his own follies is a difficult task and requires great subtlety and intelligence.  These Wyn Davies has in abundance and his loving portrait of Teazle is one that bring a smile to your face long after the curtain has fallen.

Tyrone Savage gives his best ever performance as Joseph Surface.  He makes Joseph so smooth, polished and suave that we immediately suspect Joseph of insincerity.  But we find that he is worse than that and can be cruel as when Joseph brusquely denies funds to Sir Oliver who is posing as a needy relative.  Yet, the brilliance of Savage’s performance is how he is able to make this villain’s perfidy as well as his consternation so humorous.  Savage’s speech is a model of precision and clarity, both necessary in allowing the wit of Sheridan’s complex sentences to shine through.

As Joseph’s brother Charles, Sébastien Heins is well cast.  His open face and warm voice contrast perfectly with the pinched expression and cold voice that Savage gives Joseph.  While Heins lacks the polished enunciation to make him verbally the equal of Savage, his manner exudes a sense of freedom, that Sir Oliver at first mistakes for profligacy but comes to see as generosity.  Heins is careful to make us know that a true care for others underlies all of Charles’s outward jocundity and playfulness.

As Sir Oliver Surface, Joseph Ziegler finds much humour in the contrast between character’s calm outward speech and the furious inward asides that punctuate his remarks.  Ziegler makes us enjoy every moment in watching the change in Sir Oliver’s appraisal of both his nephews’ true natures.

Brigit Wilson is hilarious as Mrs. Candour who immediately undercuts every virtuous sentiment she expresses with petty gossip.  As if an expression of her outsized personality, Fox has given her overlarge pannier allowing Wilson to create the physical comedy of Candour’s inability to sit down anywhere without a struggle with her dress.  Rod Beattie plays Crabtree as a dim-witted older gentleman who tries in vain to appear witty.  Tom Rooney, play’s Crabtree’s nephew, Sir Benjamin, as the epitome of lack of insight.  Sir Benjamin’s advances to the virtuous Maria are always rebuffed and his remarks are laughed at by others but he can never understand why.  Anusree Roy gives Snake the polished responses of someone whose allegiance lies only with the person who pays her the most.         

Among the virtuous characters, Monice Peter is a strong Maria, conscious of her self-worth and unwilling to compromise her ideals.  Michael Blake plays the character Mr. Balance, who replaces the moneylender Moses in the original whom some have found a stereotype of a Jewish moneylender.  Blake makes Balance perhaps the most reasonable and realistic character in the play who is more familiar with the ways of the world than the others.  The one disappointment, surprisingly, is Brent Carver as the loyal Rowley who helps both Sir Peter and Sir Oliver.  He doesn’t project to the same level as the others and fails to give his character much of a personality.    

It is a real pleasure to see an 18th-century comedy so well played with an emphasis on the work’s inherent wit and design than on any imposed concept.  Director Antoni Cimolino showed a similar affinity for the gently satiric comedy of this period when he directed George Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem (1707) in 2014.  The period of the Restoration and 18th-century has come to have a strange affinity with our own age of narcissism, self-promotion, self-encapsulation in bubbles of like-minded people and generally cynical disbelief in what is sincere or true.  Let’s hope that Cimolino continues to explore the rich vein of this dramatic literature that tells us our society has seen phases like this before.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photos: (from top) Tyrone Savage as Joseph Surface and Shannon Taylor as Mrs. Teazle; Brigit Wilson as Mrs. Candour, Tom Rooney as Sir Benjamin Backbite and Rod Beattie as Crabtree; Maev Beaty as Lady Sneerwell; Shannon taylor as Mrs. Teazle and Geraint Wyn Davies as Sir Peter Teazle. ©2017 Cylla von Tiedemann.

For tickets, visit www.stratfordfestival.ca.