Reviews 2008
Reviews 2008
✭✭✭✭✭
by Terrence Rattigan, directed by Christopher Newton
Shaw Festival, Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
July 5-October 5 2008
by Christopher Hoile, Principal Reviewer for Stage Door
"When the Party’s Over"
Terrence Rattigan’s first non-comic play, “After the Dance”, opened on June 6, 1939. By September 3 of that year Britain was at war with Germany. Though the coming war is never mentioned in the play, it conveys, despite its moments of hilarity, an atmosphere of impending doom that the characters work hard not to face. This is one of those obscure plays that the Shaw Festival is so expert at bringing to vivid life. The casting, acting, design and direction are impeccable.
Rattigan’s immediate subject is the so-called Bright Young Things who grew up in the wake of World War I, too young to serve in that conflict, but who grew up convinced that the “War to end all wars” proved that there was no inherent meaning or morality in the world and that a life of frivolity was the only proper response to so much destruction. This intentional emphasis of triviality over seriousness was, of course, merely a pose. By the late 1930s the Bright Young Things were no longer young and seemed not quite so bright, especially to the more serious generation that followed. Rattigan’s main characters are of the older generation who try to prolong their youth in a perpetual haze of drink, parties and drugs. For them to slip into seriousness would be to reveal they are old and had become that worst thing in their vocabulary, a “bore”.
The main representatives of this monied, idle older generation are would-be author David Scott-Fowler, his wife Joan and John Reid, a parasite on their hospitality whose presence is suffered because he makes them laugh. Peter Scott-Fowler, David’s ward and secretary, and his girlfriend Helen Banner, stand in for the younger generation. The main problem is that Helen is not in love with Peter but with David and he is in love with her. Though the others had tried, only Helen’s influence convinces David, who had been on the verge of drinking himself to death, to give up alcohol. She takes it as her mission to save him from himself. Rather than seeing him and his friends revel in the hollow echo of the past, Helen thinks only she can give David a new start in life, that he can give up his worthless history of a minor Italian nobleman and write the important work he had once envisioned. Helen’s plan to marry David will disrupt two other lives, but she discounts their pain since she thinks Peter is young enough to get over his loss and that David and Helen never really loved each other.
Newton draws the kind of highly nuanced ensemble acting acting from the cast for which the Shaw Festival is renowned. As David, Patrick Galligan creates a fascinating portrait of a man who ought to be happy but is being gnawed away by an unidentified sense of dissatisfaction. Helen may think she has found its source and knows its cure, but as Galligan plays it we can see that David is subject to a general existential anomie beyond Helen’s comprehension. Galligan shows that David wants to believe in Helen’s vision of him and that he really could start again while at the same time suggesting that the fervent attention of a younger woman is more important to him than her plans for his reformation. As Joan, Deborah Hay is absolutely superb. Initially, we take her for the frivolous person she plays to other people, but as her drinking increases and as the truth of David’s relationship with Helen come out, Hay divests Joan of layer after layer of the superficialities she has habitually encased herself in. The moment when Helen tells Joan that David wants to divorce her is shattering. Hay shows us every minute development as the terrible truth slowly sinks in and overwhelms her.
It is great to see Neil Barclay play such a juicy role as Reid. Layers of self-irony imbue his every word. His Reid knows he’s the court jester of the household but he is also fully aware of his pointless existence. Like a Shakespearean fool it falls to Reid to tell truths to others about themselves and this Barclay does with an impressive gravitas that suggests that Reid has taken on a pose of wit to hide the pain of wisdom. Peter is a fine part for Ken James Stewart who finally gets a large enough role to show what a fine actor he is. Peter sees through the self-delusions of David but Stewart shows us the pressure building up inside him between his duty to David as his guardian and employer and his disdain for his style of living. When David takes away his girlfriend he is justifiably furious.
In smaller roles Jay Turvey has a key part to play as Arthur Power, one of the older generation who has seen through their folly and has the symbolic job of cleaning windows. Lisa Horner is rather over-the-top as Julia Browne, the most obnoxious example of a Bright Young Thing grown old and surviving on booze and gossip. Claire Jullien makes a brief apperance as the hopped-up, nearly out-of-control Moya Lexington, another Bright Young Thing gone bad, while Jennifer Phipps is very funny first as the hapless Maid at the Scott-Fowlers’ party and later as Miss Potter, David’s dour replacement for Peter as secretary.
William Schmuck has designed a Georgian drawing room for the Royal George stage so lovely one would happily move in. His costumes always enhance the characters and he indulges his sense of humour in the outlandishness of Julia Browne’s get-ups. As director Christopher Newton may have been a last-minute substitute for the ailing Neil Munro, but this play is directly up his street. Of a 2002 production Guardian critic Michael Billington wrote, “I am now utterly convinced that this is one of Rattigan's finest studies of the English vice of emotional repression”. Newton is a master in training his cast to communicate as much through what they don’t say as through what they do. Rattigan may have writing about a very specific time and place in 1939 but the play has a curious relevance now when the public is more willing to wallow in the trivialities of entertainment news than engage itself with the more important issues of war and environmental destruction. As Rattigan’s play shows so powerfully the desire to be continually entertained at the expense of confronting the serious issues in life ultimately results in a terrible awakening. Let's hope for more Rattigan at the Shaw in future seasons.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Deborah Hay and Patrick Galligan. ©2008 Emily Cooper.
2008-08-06
After the Dance