OR THIS…..
For maybe four decades, on every trip to London, I have made it a point to visit the National Portrait Gallery and sink, each time, into the gaze of one or two different female subjects who hang there as portraits. Two visits ago it was Lady Colin Campbell, done in oil circa 1897, who according to the Shaw Festival program notes was “an experienced and accomplished philanderer.” Relevant to the festival’s production of The Philanderer by Shaw, it is she who convinced Shaw to ditch his last act for a rewritten one. Happily, this production uses the original last act as the playwright had intended before Lady Colin, fearing social vulnerability, directed her deep, intense, and overpowering eyes at him and declared that the last act “ought to be put into the fire.”
This production, directed by Lisa Peterson, finds in Shaw’s play a high gear comedy with a sustained and sharply focused physicality driving the text’s every word. Verging on, but not quite screwball, it contains a subdued Keystone Cops energy that prevails at times. We here actually see through the action what Shaw’s words mean in this hilarious and crisp production and I laughed with delight from beginning to end. Shaw’s witty writing here becomes theatrically exuberant and assertive with comic energy. The sets by Sue LePage are elegant and appealing in their immaculate and done-just-right richness. Keven Lamotte’s lighting contributes to many strikingly defined and visually rich moments, especially in the last act’s creation of stunning silhouettes. Both LePage and Lamotte charm us into the undeniably seductive world they have created and hold us there.
The play this time begins with darkness and, within it, the pulsating sounds of committed copulation. Or maybe it’s intense foreplay -who knows, since, after all, it is dark? Whatever the case, this is a production in which words have a physical dimension, have a body to them, throughout. When the lights come on we see the sensual movements of shared senses and playful sexuality. “Is this really a play by Shaw?” you ask. Of course, cigarettes are lit, of course the conversation runs with “Is this your first love affair?” Grace, played by Marla McLean, is a woman of imperial sensuality and, for some reason, one thinks of an almost overly ripe avocado. Gord Rand as Leonard is a lanky fellow, boyish and charming, one who seems delighted in everything he says but is not one to commit. However, “half the women fall in love with me” he explains.
One of these ladies on his list of ever-readies is Moya O’Connell’s Julia, a woman of storming physicality, a woman who goes about like a detonator waiting to do its thing. Both the “he and she” relationships, we find in these situations, are rich with self-absorption, melodramatic passions, forced indignation, and implicit sexuality. Julia and Leonard don’t converse, but rather erupt at each other. She displays a mercurial intensity in playing out her desires while he, with asides to the audience and all, maintains a delightful contained hysteria. She is “a woman who behaves like a spoiled child” while he jumps about with agility, something like a harlequin on acid.
At the Ibsen Club—introduced by who else but Henrik himself singing about the pleasures of smoking—we meet the two dads of the two ladies and both are huffy, vesty, mustached, sexist, proper, and pipe smoking. For some unknown reason, they equate eating beef with manliness. As expected with the longstanding actors Michael Ball and Ric Reid, they are assertively present and suggest lifetimes in their two well-textured performances. We also meet and enjoy the ambiguity and playful confidence of Harveen Sandhu’s Sylvia. The production remains hilarious and sharply dynamic with dialogue paced up a notch. We find that Leonard’s face contorts three time on each consonant. As before, the sexual charge between Leonard and Grace suggests that clothing is an inconvenience. As before, Sue LePage’s immaculate sets show an appealing elegance.
After another delightfully quirky scene change, we find Julia to be a sprawling, tomboyish, lanky creature. We find Grace ever-energized sexually. And we meet potential mate number two: a hilariously starched and contained Victorian doctor, Percival Paramore. Shaw’s writing here is theatrical and exuberant as each physical movement bursts with purpose. The lively exchange between Grace and Julia bubbles with bitchiness. We are also required to wonder if a “womanly woman” is fit for the Ibsen Club. And we note that the book tossed into and drenched in the fountain is The Quintessence of Ibsenism in which –if memory still serves me well- Shaw sang the praises of the Norwegian playwright’s use of discussion as a theatrical method. No wonder that Paramore later protectively cradles the sacred volume.
And the famous rarely produced last act? We are immediately stunned by the set’s spare and commanding beauty—death black arches, death black tuxes and death black chairs. We find that the four year marriage of Julia and Paramore has its own very dark tones as in the exchange: “Do you like Julia?” “Do you?” “I don’t.” Or according to Julia “such things shouldn’t happen” or “everybody makes love to me and nobody cares for me. Finally Julia concludes “I’ve had enough of being a toy.” Meanwhile, the two fathers remain entrenched societal creatures and they compete, referring to their daughters, in a verbal tennis match. The young men get to ask “why do you women blame us for the suffering you conceal from us” and we hear also the distinction between playmates and helpmates.
This is a vigorous and thoroughly enjoyable production in which Shaw takes aim at critics, scientists, vivisectors, and audiences. If he skilfully takes on social hypocrisy, the playwright also shows insightful smarts in facing the impossibilities inherent in human relationships. Moya O’Connell adds a knack for broad physical comedy to her resume. Gord Rand, in a performance of implied private existence beneath his brilliantly executed degrees of agitation, both physical and emotional, is an unqualified joy. As said before, words and bodies are here one and the same and the invigorating result is a take on The Philanderer that you must not miss.