Reviews 2000
Reviews 2000
✭✭✭✭✩
by J.B. Priestley, directed by Neil Munro
Shaw Festival, Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
May 26-October 28, 2000
“A Deeper Kind of Mystery”
In place of the usual mystery at the the Royal George Theatre this season at the Shaw Festival is J.B. Priestley's 1937 play "Time and the Conways". People who go expecting something à la Agatha Christie will get much more of a mystery than they bargained for. Here the question is not a simple "Whodunnit?" but rather "What is the nature of time and man's place in it?". If this seems rather much to ask of the usual Christie crowd, Priestley makes his metaphysical questions as easy to take as possible by cloaking them in the guise of the story of typical middle-class family between the wars.
Priestley's usual system is to take a conventional genre and to tweak it in some way so that it can only be understood in an unconventional way. At the end of his "An Inspector Calls" (1945), Priestley shifts our focus from the family under investigation to the Inspector himself whose nature and motivation are the real mystery of the play. In "Conways" Priestley tells a typical tale of a family in decline but uses an unusual shift in presenting the events that changes our perspective on them. Act 1 takes place at the 21st birthday party for Kay Conway in 1919. Act 3 takes place just a few minutes after the end of the action in Act 1. Act 2, however, takes place in 1938, exactly 19 years after the events in Acts 1 and 3.
According to Christopher Innes's programme note, which prefers to see the play primarily as a document of social history, Act 2 is merely a "flash forward" in time so that we can better see the seeds of the collapse of the Conway family in Act 3. But that is not a sufficient explanation of what happens. As in a ghost story, a real frisson goes through the audience when Kay in Act 3 begins to mention to her brother Alan events of Act 2 that have not yet happened. Social history will not help explain the eerieness that settles in, but Priestley's view of the nature of time does. In Act 2, Alan explains that all moments in time are simultaneous, "Now, at this moment, or any moment, we're only a cross-section of our real selves. What we really are is the whole stretch of ourselves, all our time . . . ."
As directed by Neil Munro, this mystery becomes even deeper. Act 1 ends with Kay alone gazing out the window at a strange play of lights. Act 2 ends in the same way. If Act 2 is merely a "flash forward" how do Kay and Alan know of those events 19 years earlier? Is Act 2 merely Kay's reverie of what might happen in 1938? Or is Act 2 the base time, with Kay's party in Acts 1 and 3 as the flashbacks? As I said, what starts out, seemingly, as a straightforward glimpse into a family's life between the wars becomes by the end anything but straightforward. The weird disorientation that Priestley's play causes, and that Munro's staging increases, will stay with you longer and that the simple surprise of any conventional mystery.
Munro's efforts are aided by one of the cleverest set designs I've seen in a long time. Brian Perchaluk presents us in Acts 1 and 3 with the genteel but over-decorated parlour that perfectly suits the middle-class taste of the Conways as we come to know them. The sole entrance is a stage left and the window Kay gazes from is in the middle of the back wall. In the mysterious Act 2, the entire set has been rotated by 90 degrees so that the sole entrance is now where Kay's window was and the window at stage right. Just as Act 2 shifts our perspective on the action in time, so the Perchaluk's set shifts our perspective in space. It's simple but brilliant. This is enhanced by Ereca Hassell's evocative lighting especially in the eerie glow Kay gazes at in Acts 1 and 2 and in the beautiful gradually dimming of the lights with tight spotlights on separate faces that ends the play. Each act is preceded by the projected photo montages by David Cooper in which the faces of the various Conways appear and disappear in various configurations, all suitably accompanied by Paul Sportelli's ethereal, Satie-esque music.
Munro draws superb performances from the cast so naturalistic and detailed that we really do feel as if we are peering through an invisible fourth wall as a family lives out its life. This is especially true in the extraordinarily complex first act when the Conways are preparing for charades being played off stage. The logistics of creating a seeming chaos on stage as the Conways root through old clothes for their costumes is mind-boggling. The cast know their characters so well that they fully meet Priestley's challenge of having them pick up exactly where they left off after an intervening act as their future selves. The play demonstrates yet again why the Shaw Festival company has become so renowned for their ensemble productions.
All of the cast show us in Act 1 the beginnings of the traits we will see in full in Act 2 and all are expert in detailing the passage of the 19 years between the two. Nora McLellan plays Mrs. Conway as a self-centred, meddlesome, impractical woman who is already courting danger by choosing favourites among her children. In Act 2 McLellan accomplishes the difficult task of making us sympathize with the plight of someone we dislike. Central among the six Conway children is Jenny L. Wright as Kay, whose sensitivity already makes her seem detached even in the midst of her own party and prepares us for the visions of foreboding she has in Act 3. Laurie Paton as Madge is as embittered and petty 19 years later as she was so emphatically idealistic when we first meet her. Similarly, the dislike Jane Perry's Hazel shows Ernest Beevers is so exaggerated it is no surprise to find her married to him 19 years later. Susie Burnett as the youngest Conway, Carol, is excellent at showing us a one of those children so full of life they seem fated not to live long.
Peter Krantz plays the eldest Conway, Alan, the only one who seems not to change in the 19 years between acts 1 and 2. He is thought of as a failure and non-entity in 1919 and is so in 1938. In a role poles apart from his romantic Maxim de Winter of last year, Krantz's Alan shuffles purposelessly about the set and says little. Yet, he is the one who holds the key not only to how people can cope when things go wrong but also to the meaning of the play itself. Krantz's achievement is to make us see the worth in a character whom almost everyone disregards. Bruce Davies as Mrs. Conway's favourite, Robin, is excellent as the young man happily returned from the war and as the drunken lout he becomes.
Rounding out the cast Jan Alexandra Smith, as a friend of Hazel, sharply distinguishes the silly girl she is in Act 1 from the the woman in Act 2 whose marriage has become a nightmare. Douglas Hughes is excellent at conveying differing kinds of awkwardness, first as a friend of the family and later at Mrs. Conway's lawyer. Simon Bradbury, distances himself even further from his earlier roles in farce as Ernest Beevers, the man pursuing Hazel, seeming merely antisocial in Act 1 but revealed in Act 2 as a character of the basest sort.
"Time and the Conways" is a play that demands patience and close attention. Only partway into Act 3 do we become aware of where the play is heading. It is to the credit of Munro and his cast that the play engages us so completely without the benefit of a traditional plot. For, indeed, our patience and attention are rewarded in a way far beyond what the usual mystery can offer--what is revealed might actually change the way you think.
©Christopher Hoile
Photo: Peter Krantz. ©2000 Shaw Festival.
2000-09-12
Time and the Conways