Reviews 2009
Reviews 2009
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written by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Eda Holmes
Shaw Festival, Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
May 21-October 9, 2009
"‘The Universe is Curved’"
“In Good King Charles’s Golden Days” (1939), completed when Shaw was 83, used to be written off as a product of Shaw’s dotage. This, the Shaw Festival’s third production of this once-obscure work has proved yet again that that glib dismissal is simply not true. In fact, as Allan MacInnis’s revelatory productions showed in 1997, “King Charles” clearly looks forward to such other witty plays of ideas involving historical personages as Tom Stoppard’s “Travesties” (1974) and “Arcadia” (1993) and Michael Frayn’s “Copenhagen” (1998). Eda Holmes’s current production makes certain missteps and does not have the excitement of discovery that animated MacInnis’s, but it still demonstrates that this is a vibrant, thought-provoking work that seems amazingly modern.
In “Travesties” Stoppard, knowing that James Joyce, Vladimir Lenin and Tristan Tzara were all in in Zurich at the same time, imagined a play in which they would interact. So in “King Charles”, Shaw has Charles II of England, his mistresses and several of their most notable contemporaries all happen to meet and debate topics in science, religion, politics and art, which Shaw cleverly demonstrates are all versions of the same human endeavour to understand the world. In this case the many figures unintentionally unite in 1680 in Cambridge in the study of Isaac Newton. In a fine performance by Graeme Somerville, who captures both his brilliance and impracticality, Newton considers that his greatest work will not be in in science or mathematics but in decoding the Bible. He’s a bachelor and intellectual, utterly incapable of dealing with the details of the everyday world. That job is left to his stern housekeeper Mrs. Basham, played Mary Haney fully in her comic element. This paradigm points to the play’s conclusion about the roles of men and women. As an innocent witness Shaw includes a maid Sally, well played by Esther Maloney.
First to arrive are “Mr. Rowley” (none other than Charles II) and George Fox, founder of the Society of Friends better known as “Quakers”. Quakers, who seeks an inner enlightenment through group meditation, represent a religious stance outside the dogmas of either Protestants or Catholics, who would presently be at war with each other in England. Ric Reid is well cast as Fox, combining both a rough, unprepossessing appearance with forcefulness of speech. As for Charles II, Eda Holmes has erred in allowing Benedict Campbell to fall back on his technique of pompous bluster that he used to such ill effect as Shakespeare’s Henry IV at Stratford. When Peter Hutt played the role in 1997, we felt an increasing unease in Charles that was unresolved by the end of Act 1. As the only character to appear both acts of the play, Shaw clearly intends for Act 2 to serve as the resolution of the agitation in this character. If Charles is played as a superficial and unflappable egotist as Campbell plays him, there is no tension to be resolved in the second act.
The cause for the rise in tension is the arrival in Newton’s study Charles’s three mistresses--Nell Gwynn, Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland and Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth. They also are mistresses in another sense of the term. The famed actress Nell is a mistress of language. Barbara is a mistress of beauty. Louise is a mistress of politics in that the King is financially dependent upon her connections with the King of France. In Act 2 we meet a fourth and superior kind of beauty in Catherine de Bragança, who, importantly, is his wife. Nicola Correia-Damude is excellent as Nell, who enjoys a freedom the others do not have in that she is not stuck in a single role but makes her living by playing many roles. Through her Shaw makes the point that everyone is acting a part, perhaps the King more than anyone. Claire Jullien and Lisa Codrington make the two duchesses a study in contrasts. Both are clearly more superficial that Nell, but Barbara has beauty without rationality while Louise has beauty with too much calculation.
The greatest irritant of all arrives in the form of James, Duke of York, Charles’s younger brother. While Charles converted to Protestantism to become King of England, James is proudly Catholic. It is Charles’s ability, tiring though it is, to be all things to all people, that has allowed him to reign successfully, whereas James’s pride and inflexibility, as Charles knows, will be James’s undoing. Andrew Bunker perfectly conveys James’s pig-headed self-satisfaction.
Shaw, thus having set up comparisons and contrasts between science and religion, inner vision versus dogma, being versus role-playing, Realpolitik versus political might, finally gives us the artist’s spin on all of this with the appearance of German-born Godfrey Kneller (1646-1723), the royal portrait painter. He is played with just the right diffidence and strength of German accent by Ken James Stewart. His announcement that there are no straight lines in the Duchess of Cleveland just as there are none in nature, sets off flights of speculation that has the 17th-century characters foreseeing the most advanced ideas of the 20th century. Earlier in the play, the Duchess of Cleveland flippantly suggests that the earth could be ten million years old instead of the official 4000 years arrived at by the Bishop Ussher in 1650 and accepted by Newton. To this George Fox says, “Are ten million years beyond the competence of Almighty God? They are but a moment in His eyes.” With Kneller’s announcement, “Motion in a curve is the law of nature,” Newton exclaims anticipating Einstein, “Then not only is the path of the cannon ball curved, but space is curved; time is curved; the universe is curved.” Trying this act together, Newton notes to Kneller that “You and God are both artists”. All the characters, however, in their various ways are interpreters of creation.
After the wild crescendo of ideas in Act 1, Shaw gives us a decrescendo into calm in Act 2, where Charles and his wife, the Portuguese Catholic Catherine of Bragança, in a sensitive performance by Laurie Paton, are the only characters. Just as Mrs. Basham tided up after Newton, so here Catherine tidies up after Charles. She tidies up his inner life as well and unlike the narrow-minded Mrs. Basham is infinitely sensible. The King’s mistresses mean nothing to her because she knows only she has his love. She is clearly the one who gives Charles the power to continue through one conflict after another. She sees Charles as a man but knows when to dress him up to act the role of King. Charles may be financially dependent upon the Duchess of Portsmouth, but he is emotionally and spiritually dependent on Catherine.
Shaw is known to be pro-feminist and in the preface to this play he states that a law should state that men and women be represented in government in equal numbers. Rather than finding the feminist aspects in the play itself, Holmes has added a prologue and epilogue to Act 1. She has the maid Sally poring over Newton’s papers before he enters and then return to them at the end in an attempt to show how women were denied education. Besides setting the play off on the wrong note, it is also unnecessary since the whole force of the play leads to Charles’s salute to Catherine, “May the Queen live for ever!” The wealthy women in the play may have been educated but the play clearly shows that wealth cannot but intelligence since the two revelations to Newton about the universe come from non-scientists. Besides, Nell Gwynn brought herself up from the gutter and is now the greatest interpreter of England's greatest playwrights. Catherine says she was born to rule but as a Catholic the English will not let her. If we substitute “woman” for “Catholic”, we see how Shaw is making the point in the Preface using simply a different prejudice.
Camellia Koo has given Newton an elegant circular study placing him at the centre while Michael Gianfrancesco has designed the impressive period costumes. Given that Holmes ends the play with Catherine contemplating to a mobile of the sun and planets, one might have thought, given Koo’s set and all the talk about curves and gravitation, that Holmes would play more in her blocking with who is orbiting whom. While Holmes has not found all the humour in the play that MacInnis did in 1997 and she does not make the interplay of ideas as gripping, you still leave invigorated by Shaw’s dazzling attempts to link all aspects of human endeavour to each other, to show how every discipline has something to teach and something to learn from the others.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Ric Reid, Graeme Somerville, Mary Haney and Benedict Campbell. ©David Cooper.
2009-08-11
In Good King Charles’s Golden Days