Reviews 2014
Reviews 2014
✭✭✭✭✩
by J.B. Priestely, directed by Joseph Ziegler
Shaw Festival, Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
June 6-October 26, 2014
Parker: “Marriage – well - marriage to begin with, it’s an institution, isn’t it?”
The 2014 season at the Shaw Festival is heavy with comedies – from the obscure like St. John Hankin’s The Charity that Began at Home (1906) to the classic like Shaw’s Arms and the Man (1894), from 1893 with Shaw’s The Philanderer to 1973 with Edward Bond’s The Sea. Of the seven comedies now on offer, the one with the greatest number of laughs per minute is surely When We Are Married (1938) by J. B. Priestely. Even if you have seen the play before, the current production is so well cast and directed you will want to see it again.
The action is set in 1908 in the sitting room of the house of Alderman Joseph Helliwell (Thom Marriott) in the fictional town of Cleckywyke in Yorkshire. On this evening three couples have gathered to celebrate their shared 25th wedding anniversary since it so happens that the three couples were married on this date in the same church by the same parson and they have invited the town newspaper to cover the event.
Though in the midst of celebrating the three men – Helliwell, Councillor Albert Parker (Patrick McManus) and Mr Herbert Soppitt (Patrick Galligan) – take time out to deal with a disturbing matter. The church organist Gerald Forbes (Charlie Gallant) has been spotted late at night spooning with a young girl. They have always been doubtful about the young man since he is from the south of England, where morals are laxer and they all think he should be fired. Little do they know that Gerald is in love with Helliwell’s niece Nancy (Kate Besworth) and wants to marry her. Gerald, however, has some news that knocks the wind out of the puffed up sails of these three pillars of the community. He has a letter from the parson who performed the three marriages apologizing for not letting them know that 25 years ago he was not yet qualified to marry anyone so that their marriages are in, fact, null and void.
The plot is filled with one delicious twist after another as we wait to see how the three great men of the town take the news, how their wives react when they find out, how the relations between husband and wife change now they realize they are no longer wed and how the group tries in vain to keep this information so damaging to their reputations from leaking out. Accord to Parker, marriage is “the backbone of a decent respectable life”. If they haven’t been legally marry, what state have the three couples been living in for the past 25 years?
Joseph Ziegler, who directed such comic hits for the Festival as Mary Chase’s Harvey (1944) in 2010 and Shaw’s Getting Married (1908) in 2008, has the full measure of this very cleverly constructed play. His pacing of events, his timing of surprise after surprise and his guiding the action to a crescendo of hilarity is masterfully done.
But then he is working with the best ensemble theatre company in Canada and this kind of play, driven not by a star but by the communal efforts of everyone, is exactly the Festival’s forte. The three couples are all perfectly paired. Patrick Galligan and Kate Hennig are Herbert and Clara Soppitt. Clara henpecks Herbert to such an extent that their relationship looks more like that of a mother and her ten-year-old son. Galligan makes Herbert’s misery palpable as we see how he grits his teeth as he pretends that Clara’s never-ending corrections are really helpful reminders. Once he realizes that he is no longer married and dares to defy her for the first time, the audience bursts into applause. For her part, Hennig shows that her bullying is the result of habit and she shows that Clara is so truly abashed when Herbert tells her what she is really like, we feel she may actually change her ways.
The counterpart to the Soppitts are the Parkers, Albert and Annie. Patrick McManus plays Albert as the archetypal big fish in a small pond, full of himself and his supposed power as councillor. His normal behaviour is to speak before he thinks, and if Annie dares try to get a word in he ruthlessly quashes her effort. Catherine McGregor immediately wins our sympathy as she shows us how Annie bears with her overbearing husband with stoical patience as if life were meant to be endured, not enjoyed. When she discovered she may not be married, the wonderfully measured manner she used to outline all of Albert’s faults and all she has suffered also wins our hearty applause. McManus’s Albert literally reels when she speaks to him like this and splutters into submission like a punctured balloon.
The Helliwells, Joseph and Maria, are a different type of couple altogether. Thom Marriott and Claire Jullien, husband and wife in real life, obviously relish the chance to play two obnoxious people who are always at each other’s throats. Marriott and Jullien make clear that the Helliwells have been together so long that they argue for the sake of arguing having forgotten how else to relate to each other. Their counterpart are the lovers Gerald Forbes and Nancy Holmes. These are fairly typically anodyne young sweethearts, but Charlie Gallant and Kate Besworth lend them enough vitality that we do care about their future.
While Ormonroyd’s function is ultimately to restore order, that of the Helliwells’ maid Mrs. Northrop is to destroy it. Mary Haney has played any number of wily housekeepers at the Festival, but she does it with such gusto she makes every one of them seem new. This particular housekeeper, treated disparagingly be the Helliwells, feels no compunction in keeping the secret she has overheard about their marriage a secret. In the general overturning of authority in the play, she represents the revolt of unappreciated workers against their sanctimonious employers.
Lottie Grady, a woman of ill repute, who is surprisingly familiar with all three husbands, helps destroy male authority from her own point of view. Fiona Byrne makes her so sensuous, savvy and pert, we begin to wonder if one of the newly unmarried husbands will wind up with her. Rounding off the cast, representing innocence versus the experience of women like Mrs. Northrop and Lottie, is Ruby Birtle, the household “slavey” under Mrs. Northrop’s command. Played with delightful insouciance, Jennifer Dzialoszynski generates humour from the wide-eyed manner Ruby continually reveals information she is supposed to keep secret.
For the Helliwells’ parlour, Ken MacDonald has created a a grotesquely neo-Gothic set that looks more like part of a church than a private home and thus underlines the oppressive side of traditional marriage from which the three couples will soon be free. The main peculiarity of the design is rotation of the room by 45º. So much of the action takes place in the sitting area bounded by a sofa and the chairs facing it, so that rotating the room to such an angle also forces most of the action into the downstage left quarter of the stage. This leaves three-fourths of the playing are underused and means that audience members sitting on the righthand side of the theatre will have a clearer view of the action than those on the lefthand side. To his credit, Joseph Ziegler has so well blocked the action that even when three actors are seated on the sofa, the foremost head does not blot out the other two. Still, the playing area looks awkward and the geography of the Helliwells’ house is never as clear as it should be.
This quibble aside, When We Are Married is so side-splittingly funny, that if you know two or three married couples, you may just want to invite them along to see it with you. You’re bound to have an interesting discussion afterwards.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photos: (from top) Patrick Galligan, Thom Marriott, Patrick McManus, Kate Hennig, Claire Jullien and Catherine McGregor; Peter Krantz and Jennifer Dzialoszynski. ©2014 David Cooper.
For tickets, visit www.shawfest.com.
2014-08-11
When We Are Married