I’ve long maintained that an exceptional production of a play by, say, Shaw is much akin to a memorable concert of, say, Beethoven. Try this synchronicity. The August issue of Gramophone was sitting in our mailbox, when I arrived home from a performance of Shaw’s Candida a few days ago, and therein contained was an article on the best recordings available of Beethoven’s Piano Sonata No 31 in A Flat Op 110. In his paragraph on “The Historic Choice,” author Charles Timbrell said this: “Edwin Fischer’s recording contains revelations without point-making, and it is both engaged and engaging.” “Amen,” said I, but I was then thinking of Shaw’s masterwork and not Beethoven’s.
Directed with sensitive and evocative precision by Severn Thompson, one which achieves a quietly stated and unforced but thus potent theatricality, this production is rich with humane insight. One is gently moved, one is entertained, one feels an admiration for all involved. The actors, in the top-grade fashion one expects from the Shaw Festival company, play their parts with emotional versatility, negotiating the gradations of human feeling with deceptive ease and assertive subtlety. We in the audience think we understand a character until they reveal a new flavour, a new spiciness perhaps, that requires further adjustment on our parts.
Of course, that’s just GBS keeping us on our toes as he always does, you might say. But one of the numerous virtues of this production is how the characters slip imperceptibly into their new distinct realities with ease. We are always catching up, but we are constantly unsure as to what specifically it is that eludes us of a character. Perhaps that’s what our Beethoven reviewer means by “revelations without point-making,” that with each new insight we do not have any security in something conclusive we might say, and we must live with striking but inconclusive understandings of what we experience from the stage.
Each of this Candida’s cast is certainly “engaged” – in their characters, in their narrative purpose, in their theatrical function, and, to be sure, in their art of acting. Thus, each one in turn is thoroughly “engaging.” Immediately, Claire Julien as Miss Prosperine Garnett displays a blend of fidgetiness, emotional suppression, heartbreaking need, and to some degree suggestions of inner volcano. Damien Atkins as Rev. Lexy Mill suggests a socially adept quirkiness that, albeit awkwardly, inhabits its own reality and any other as the need presents itself. Ric Reid’s Burgess, whose raison d’être has dollar signs on it, conveys an ingrained assuredness with no suggestion that he might ever understand a need to get beyond himself – he would vote for Ford and Poilievre, no doubt.
In the primary trio, Sanjay Talwar plays Rev Morell as a lifetime of unquestioned security now playing still the role of his much-admired self, although he does convey an inner realm of unspecified wounds that add mystery to his person. As young poet Marchbanks, Jonathan Sousa is both dynamic and receding, emotionally frail and all over the place until tied down to specifics. Like the rest of the cast, Sochi Fried as Candida carves out dramatic turf that quietly owns the stage even as she shares it. She implies a captivating and compelling blend of grace, firmly-set etherealness, and savoir-faire in the ways of the world – or is that savoir-être? We always wonder what it is she really thinks, don’t we?
I thoroughly enjoyed and admired this Candida, with its distinctly palpable characterizations and its many astutely-realized touches on the part of director Severn Thompson. I want to see it again to experience these human lives as they unfold as realities in their time, some with which I can connect and some not because they come from another era. But they are human, they are lives that are here carefully thought out and presented with the mastery that only accomplished artists can offer. We are very fortunate to have such an offering available to us, as we observe a play that is an insightful and critical look at Shaw’s period in time, one that very much approaches the human being with an honesty that makes it relevant to us now in our time.
And speaking of priceless: Once, when I’d arranged for an interview with her in London, Judi Dench met me at the stage door of the National Theatre and guided me to the theatre’s cafeteria where we then chatted for maybe an hour. She was delightfully unaffected, quite at ease in moving from levity to the serious and on to thoughtful recollection. When the interview was ended, I handed Dame Judi a photo I’d just picked up in the National’s lobby store and asked her to inscribe it for my wife, at which point she declared, “Oh I hate that photo and I’ve asked them to stop selling it.” She then ripped the photo into many pieces but, happily, then said, “Let’s go to my dressing room and I’ll give you a better photograph.”
All of which leads me to recommend, and I won’t take no for an answer: Shakespeare: The Man Who Pays the Rent, 400 pages of discussion/interviews by Judi Dench and Brendan O’Hea. I read it ten pages at a time and, take time to absorb because the book is rich with Judi’s personal experiences, her many insights and her uninhibited, and ripe vocabulary. A priceless must read, theatre addict or no.