Reviews 2012
Reviews 2012
✭✭✭✭✩
by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Blair Williams
Shaw Festival, Court House Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
July 5-October 6, 2012
Epifania: “Nobody is anybody without money.”
On its last appearance at the Shaw Festival, Shaw’s 1936 play The Millionairess did not fare so well. The flaws in the play’s structure showed too clearly and were not obscured by the tour-de-force performance the title role requires or by directorial insight. For the Shaw’s current production director Blair Williams seems to have found the key to making the play not only work but delight. In Nicole Underhay he has the ideal actor to make the monomaniacal materialism of the title character seem utterly alluring.
Williams gives Shaw’s play the subtitle “A Jonsonian Comedy” and that fact alone demonstrates that he understands the play’s strategy. In his Preface, Shaw states, “this play of The Millionairess does not pretend to be anything more than a comedy of humorous and curious contemporary characters, such as Ben Jonson might write were he alive now.” Probably the most famous creation of Jonson (1572-1637), Shakespeare’s contemporary and rival, is Volpone from the 1607 play of the same name, a characters who is the very personification of greed. Volpone is a character whose behaviour is absolutely shameless yet we laugh not just at him but with him since he is the cleverest, most vital character in the play.
The same is true of Epifania Ognisanti di Parerga Fitzfassenden, the title character of The Millionairess. Greed is one of the seven deadly sins, but Shaw’s Epifania is the very personification of capitalism, and, as she emphasizes, she has always followed her father’s advice to make sure all her financial dealings are within the law. Nicole Underhay gives a performance of fantastic panache. She is a portrait of capitalism in all its seductive vitality, a dynamo for generating money, without the least concern for others, all of whom she regards as inferior, except those who could damage her reputation and thus her investment potential.
One of these is her present husband Alistair Fitzfassenden (a subtly humorous Martin Happer), champion in both tennis and boxing, who is all brawn and no brain. As in a fairy tale, Epifania’s adored father made any suitor for his daughter’s hand pass a test before he could marry her. He had to turn £150 into £50,000 within six months. Alastair did so but, as Epifania found out later, it was by kiting cheques. To show her disdain she has taken up with the cultivated Adrian Blenderbland (the hilariously effete Steven Sutcliffe) as her “Sunday husband” – a man just the opposite of Alastair being all brain and no brawn.
Thus, we meet Epifania at the opening of the play, consulting the lawyer Julius Sagamore (a canny Kevin Bundy) to make out a will leaving all her money to Alastair after which she plans to commit suicide. She leaves the money to Alastair knowing that he will ruin himself. And she is disillusioned with him and his “Sunday wife” Patricia Smith (a sweetly demure Robin Evan Willis), the model of self-less domesticity, and with the lack of vigour in Adrian. She sees that she may have a gift for making money but none for finding love.
When Adrian makes the great mistake of insulting her father, she, trained in judo and boxing, beats the intellectual milksop to a pulp and, in the depths of despair of ever meeting a man her equal, she meets a third type of man she had never previously dreamt of. This is an Egyptian Doctor (Kevin Hanchard, glowing with an inner strength), a man who thinks nothing of money, is concerned only with selflessly helping the community and is completely devoted to his religion, Islam. Epifania has thus met her exact opposite. While she is immediately attracted to him, he only attracted to the vitality of her pulse. As in a fairy tale, the Doctor’s adored mother made any woman her son would marry pass a test. She would be given two hundred piastres and have to earn her living alone and unaided before her son could marry her. Epifania and the Doctor propose their tests to each other – she hoping he will pass hers, he certain she will not pass his – leaving the second act to reveal the surprising conclusion.
While Williams has underscored the Jonsonian satire of Shaw’s play, he has also emphasized its symmetrical fairy-tale-like structure where the potential man and wife must pass tests imposed by their favourite parent – she to find the most fatherlike husband, he to find the most motherlike wife. Giving immense support to Williams’ vision of the play is Cameron Porteous’ imaginative design beautifully lit by Louise Guinand. The set and the costumes for each of the play’s four scenes are ingeniously colour-coded – red for the first scene, then blue, green and gold. In each a gorgeous, vivacious dress for Underhay sums up each setting, as if each location derived its nature from her presence. If the set change from scene one to scene two in Act 1 is a surprise, the change from scene one to two in Act 2 is absolutely breath-taking.
Beside the extreme characters mentioned so far, there are two characters, a sweatshop owner and his wife, beautifully played by Michael Ball and Wendy Thatcher, who are the closest to real people in the entire play. Needless to say, their whole world and its antique business ways, but not the sweatshop itself, is swept aside in an instant by the arrival of Epifania. Mark Uhre has a small but important role of unstintingly singing the praises of his new employer before the astounded Alastair discovers it is Epifania.
With all the recent talk of the financial disparity between the 1% and the other 99% of the populace, of Ponzi schemes, of sweatshops and of how monied interests can turn the law to their favour, Shaw’s 1936 play could hardly be more relevant. Embodied in his larger-than-life Jonsonian title character, he shows us both what is so attractive and so cruel about an unbridled capitalistic worldview. Unlike Jonson, Shaw does not mete out brutal punishment to his most vital character, but instead suggests the wedding of thesis to its antithesis could lead to a synthesis that could bring about the betterment of all the world. But perhaps that is an ending one can only find in fairy tales.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Steven Sutcliffe and Nicole Underhay. ©2012 David Cooper.
For tickets, visit www.shawfest.com.
2012-08-05
The Millionairess