Nigel Shawn Williams and Claire Jullien in Candida.
Whom will Candida choose? The strong or the weak?
The Reverend James Morell, played by Nigel Shawn Williams, speaks in a firm authoritative voice that intends to “make the kingdom of heaven on earth.” He is constantly in a preaching mode and has a confrontational social conscience and little patience for opposition. When Marchbanks declares “I love your wife” Morell, unthreatened, comments that “everybody does”. Women fall for this impressive orator, as his wife Candida points out, and he takes his stature and appeal in stride. Always the shining star right from babyhood, he doesn’t know that his wife protects him in “a castle of comfort,” doesn’t know he shines in the world because others make it so. Still, Morell is a man of feeling and passion, and it is easy to be charmed by Williams’ take on him.
Wade Bogert-O’Brien’s Marchbanks is certainly wired but quite charming. He is eighteen, precociously insightful, a poet who lives in his own idealizations, and strong because, according to of Candida, he knows his own weakness. He is patronized as “dear boy” by Candida, but is old enough in wisdom to make note that she is “laughing at us,” old enough to know that Candida “means that she belongs to herself”. Marchbanks lives inside himself because he will never feel at home in the world. He “shirks from having to deal with strange people”. He is ill at ease and moves with jerky nervousness as his feelings constantly push him beyond self containment. “All the love in the world is wanting to speak but is shy” he declares, partly because he himself is “unable to utter a word”. Marchbanks cannot talk about “indifferent things”. He takes large steps like a ballroom dancer and speaks, almost in retaliation of some kind, in sentences that seem verbally predatory to make his insights known. He echoes each word with a gesture.
Claire Jullien’s Candida gives Marchbanks an outlet for his young poet’s imagination, yet maintains an automamous ambiguity, an implication of unfolding mystery. She is quite appealing with her unflappable charm, her pleasant knack for flirtation, her everyday motherliness, and her realistic point of view. She falls asleep to too much poetry, but is quite alert when she needs to assert or re-assert her control. Marchbanks is again insightful when he observes “Candida loves our souls” but she obviously enjoys the adoration from an eighteen year old poet as well. Jullien’s Candida seems to have. resources in reserve, cards up her sleeve, and savvy she doesn’t need to flaunt to be in charge. The supporting players are quite enjoyable as well as they each claim their idiosyncratic turf in the tale: Norman Browning as huffy Burgess, Krista Colosimo as secretary Proserpine, and Graeme Somerville as Lexy.
Under director Tadeusz Bradecki’s hand, these distinct characters often literally embody Shaw’s words. They behave physically in accordance with the emotional implications of the text and move with natural emphasis in their civility. This is a very entertaining and certainly not a staid production, especially since Marchbanks, in his constant big moves, is almost a Cirque du Soleil show in one man. But for all the movement, Bogert-O’Brien consistently proves extraverted with a sensitive human heart which balances the physical person. Likewise Nigel Shawn Williams is a body containing a furnace of complex passions which are balanced by a potent decency in the man. We sense much feeling in him and never can predict how the blend of passion and decency will speak. Claire Jullian is certainly rich with ambiguity as noted, an intriguing and delightful queen bee around whom her unsettled husband and her poetically-motivated suitor buzz about ineptly. This is a lively, warmly centered production, always entertaining, slightly elusive as Shaw likes to be, and fun.