THE TWELVE POUND LOOK
The typist, Kate, played by Moya O’Connell, is unknowingly hired by Lady Sims, played by Kate Besworth, to do some work for Sir Harry Sims, played by Patrick Galligan, and Kate turns out to be his ex. Before her arrival, however, Sims and Sims rehearse his knighthood ceremony and before that Tombes, Neil Barclay in fine voice, sings a song about “Eve and the apple in the bush” followed by Harveen Sandhu, as the maid, who bemoans how “women pay for what was done by Eve”.
Lady Sims then enters in regal attire to Rule Britannia on the piano. The levity here, in all of this, is unforced, seductively amusing, and acted with natural polish. When Sir Harry and Kate meet, he speaks with a clipped authority, which Galligan always does so well, and gloats that she now comes to him “as my servant.” She, meanwhile knows the score as a working woman and comes clipped in her efficient manner.
There is much unresolved in the several relationships here between Sir and Lady and between Sir and Kate. As Kate, O’Connell, while indicating there is much unspoken in her, suggests an ability to draw the flow of their mutual drama into her being. Meanwhile Galligan’s Sir Harry seems on the verge of explosion, both inner and outer. They each imply the intimacies that existed between them and how the effect of their separation still lingers for both. She finds a playful side to their drama, while he remains locked within a wounded rage.
The inner workings of their relationship makes for a palpably believable connection and, as it stands, Sir Harry likes to boast that he understands women and that he is a good husband while, in truth, his religion was a “success”, a success that was “suffocating me” Kate says. And, of course, we soon realize that a man of so little self-awareness might soon lose his second wife much as he did the first. This is a warmly human production of a warmly insightful and honest play, acted by all with keen sensitivity. Highly recommended.
LIGHT UP THE SKY
The Shaw Festival production of Moss Hart’s Light up the Sky, from 1948, albeit with some obvious enjoyment among others in the audience, is a frustrating experience. For one thing, Hart’s creation about a Boston, pre-Broadway run of a new play seems a repetitive and belabored attempt to extend the comic potential of a plot that, at least as we observe here, hasn’t enough to offer to keep us alert. We do not have much of a workable situation here with the possibility of engaging turns or complexities in plot or insights into comic character, but rather a situation of predictability.
Thus, in a nutshell, they all feel excited about the new play, they curse the play’s apparent failure on opening, they praise the play now seen for its box office potential. In the first act, all the laudatory talk about “your play” comes to sound like a set up hammered home. The presence of caged parrot who keeps repeating “Thank you, darling, SRO” seems too obviously an overdone device. Most troubling, the self-referential manner of some of these folks remains unearned and unexplored, an imposed cliché about theatrical people that doesn’t ring true.
Are we troubled by the play or its production? Indeed, one’s perceived failings in the play and those in this production at times blur together. Yes, we have stereotypes, but director Blair Williams does little to probe the human reasons for one’s becoming a stereotype in the first place. We, in some cases, have characters meant to serve a function of some kind, it seems, but it is hard to connect with a function that apparently had no option to be otherwise.
As well, with Hart’s given format of talking about the play in each of three acts, Williams doesn’t snap up the pace to keep his audience engaged in such repetition, but allows the play to rely on clichéd types to carry the humour. When he sets a level of frenzy, it seems imposed and even formulaic, not an extension of comedy in the text. These characters are given many things to do, but these seem outward directed by them and not inwardly born.
All the effusiveness, all the fake humility, all the shallowness of these theatrical types cannot go on so long without some indication, in each case, of why it exists. Who are these people? What are the possible reasons that they behave as they do? Even shallow people have a life. Even shallow people have something that we can sense is really at stake, no matter how small, when they resort to pretension or nastiness.
Given the above, we do have several characters who are realized as genuine human beings of implied human depth. In their cases we believe they live actual lives elsewhere, even as they function in service here of stage comedy. As the budding playwright, Peter Sloan, Charlie Gallant is subdued, vulnerable and also initially naïve in his belief in show biz people. Graeme Somerville, as the world-experienced playwright Owen Turner, does a compelling blend of semi-suave and human heart, all the way down to a lower register that implies sophistication.
Turner’s voice-of-experience encouragement for Sloan – “I felt the way you do now, but I stayed”- is genuinely touching. Fiona Byrne’s Miss Lowell is a lesson in understatement and silence implying a great deal. The rejected Stella of Laurie Paton also rings humanly and – humorously – true at the table, and we sense some wound in her bluster. Kelly Fox’s Frances certainly implies a life lived, ergo an always available edge in her manner of speech and movement. Whether the play really needs the characters of Stella and Frances, however, is another question.
On the other hand, one suspects – what is it? –a wrong call of sorts or even miscasting in conceiving some parts or situations. Claire Jullien, being an actor of a usually generous presence, doesn’t find in herself a completely self-centered and selfish bitch of a diva who selfishly wants all. She doesn’t dominate with an indifference to others. We sense no ice in the presence of her ego. Steven Sutcliffe, always capable of subtly suggesting much, is here given one note to play. Both characters have more to offer.
Thom Marriott is an actor who can reveal several inner processes simultaneously at work, but here, flexible and versatile as he is, at times seems more inconvenienced than driven as a money-hungry s.o.b of a producer. It’s an enjoyable performance, but should it be so enjoyable? Meanwhile, the playwright seems to coast or take unnecessary side-excursions, at times, with characters who distract. It is indeed arguable how sharply comic a production this might have been but, as it is, we are left to wonder.