A few seconds of animation footage of a boat directed full speed ahead at the audience, a floating inflated fish and bubbles ascending merrily, and one feels present here the spirit, perhaps, of Terry Gilliam of Monty Python days. And then a music track that is playfully percussive and hip-tossing friendly, with a set and costumes designed in rich hues of inviting and quite light-hearted absurdity. And then an often erratic movement of bodies, much in high gear and spiked sometimes with the vigor of farce. Some characters are tripping out while others seem bent psychologically askew and wanting out of what they presently are.
And is that not William the butler who enters blowing a kazoo? Does he not have a twinkle in his eye? And doesn’t director Jim Mezon’s production of Shaw’s You Never Can Tell follow suit and have its own, well, twinkle? Are we not being asked to lighten up and put habitual expectation of Shaw aside so we might feel the unspoken heart of his characters in their diverting world that never diverts quite enough? Appropriately, the lawyers and the father, those who advocate rules, end up with ridiculous masks to wear while William, with his sagacious sense of place, proves the world-wise heart of this production. He knows his place well, nd he wants it to remain undisturbed, while the others often don’t know where to place themselves and are conspicuously disturbed.
There’s a telling moment in the fourth act when William, played by Festival treasure Peter Millard, re-enters a situation of hostilities and general upset. All the participants in this noisy scene pause into quiet, as if their servant’s efficient deference is conferring upon all an identity, one above his station to be sure, that demands a dignity they can’t seem to muster. William is an age-brewed butler who by his presence implies the roles that others are expected to play. He is also a beneficent presence who manages each conversation as he wishes and when he says “Sir” -which is often- he hits home the fact that the others are unworthy of such respect. He is adept at getting in his subtle barbs too, at speaking the truth without giving too much offence and if he claims, “being a waiter is born in the character” he is, in turn, considered, “the most thoughtful of men.”
Tara Rosling is Mrs. Clandon, a mother of three who declares, “I married before I knew what I was doing and have never been in love.” Rosling’s animated voice and physicality are certainly a delight to behold, mixed as they are with an almost regal poise, motherly authority, and vulnerability too. We sense in her a life, long lived but still on hold, with much of her heart unrealized, unknown, yet always, it seems, vaguely present in what seems a quiet longing. Patrick McManus is Fergus Crampton, the husband from whom she long ago took flight with the kids. Crampton is a man of grumbly bitterness who snarls and quietly snorts but is not too explosive. As a self-proclaimed “properly hardened man,” he feels he should endure the pulling of teeth without gas, walks slightly bent with self-consuming bitterness, and fears to present a bad image in public and with his family. He seems much an ordinary guy on the verge of breakdown. His skin is too tight. This Crampton is a ton of cramp, thank you, GBS.
The twins, Dolly and Philip, will annoy some, I’m sure, with their hyper, unstoppable, skit on a dime, and very with it manner, but they are having a fun time and –how dare they?- they are getting away with it. To the adults, they are “clever children” who can’t “hold their tongues” and “barbarian children” according to their mother. These twins, played by Jennifer Dzialoszynski and Stephen Jackman-Torkoff, are dotty in high drive, their spoken delivery revved up a notch, their animated bodies quite pleasantly extravagant with gestures in all directions. These twins are precisely synchronized to each other and they prefer to improvise scenes imbued with a sense of delighted self- mockery and hyper chatty dramatics. They may play the game of life, when needed, but certainly delight in games as they feed any lunacy –this along with an attitude of not taking “this island seriously.” Did I mention that he is black and tall while she is neither? Both, in their imaginative self-indulgence, are a lot of fun to watch.
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Also delightful are Peter Krantz as Finch and Jeff Meadows as Bohun. Finch is paunchy in manner if not in belly, a man of premature stuffiness and a voice that seems to moan from afar. As we see in this production, humans play roles, play games, and Finch seems to ascend and descend in the role of authority like a wave on the shore of this “seaside town.” He fumes and he is snickered at, his voice glides with implied judgement on others, and he is a man who is easily vexed and hurt. He is deemed as “old- fashioned” and admits that he is “indulged as an old fogey.” Meanwhile, Jeff Meadows’ Bohum is a self-propelling super-wiz lawyer whose father is William the butler. If the latter reflects the class system and is a butler and man who almost craves the societal confines of his position, his expansive son is much otherwise. When allowed to serve, William is content. But enter his son, now a prestigious lawyer of society’s prestigious echelons, one who stands impossibly tall, takes thrusting steps, and is garbed in black, and we have –what is it?- a Svengali to the multitudes who seems, as played by Meadows, on the verge of a vaudeville dance. Or is he a societal Ubermensch,, given to bombastic authority in voice and grand gestures, a man with penetrating understanding whom others heed. In any case, Meadows-Bohum here is funny as hell.
The odd love angle of You Never Can Tell involves Gray Powell’s Valentine, a dentist whose “business is to hurt people” but -since we meet him with just his first patient- he hasn’t really had much such business thus far. Over time, we find that he is a game player, a self- indulgent pursuer of women who now finds one in Gloria who won’t play such a game because she never learned how -or did she? He is also a self-confessed fortune hunter who is much attuned to ‘the duel of sex,” a man who calls himself a “butterfly” and who “plays with women’s affections.” Almost as soon as we meet him, his first outburst is animated and pointed towards hysteria. Later we see how, as he tries to gain the trust of Julia’s mother, he reveals a busy seducer’s past by saying, “You’re very different to all the other mothers that have interviewed me.”
If Valentine does a lousy job of concealing who he is –or is it that he conceals himself best by apparently revealing himself so much?- Gloria seems an unreachable severity wrapped and concealed at first in a coat from neck to toe. Gloria, played by Julia Course, seems a dehumanized robot of her mother’s making and her mother echoes in Julia’s annoyed indignation, defiance even, at all the artificiality that women are supposed to be. “How I love the name of mother,” she exclaims. She finds love “vulgar” and has no intention of getting married in this “convention ridden world.” However, in Act 4, she enters red gowned with long gloves and finally we can see she does have a woman’s hips. She still agonizes about “my miserably cowardly womanly feelings” but it is also revealed that she did have her list of guys back in Madeira. Valentine may say, “You are a clever girl, but you have not been awakened yet” but when she reverses roles and becomes the aggressor, he is rather wiped out and unsettled. If he is unprepared for this Gloria, so are we.
Valentine and Gloria are funny in their remoteness from each other. She doesn’t seem to possess an undercurrent of human heart beneath her imposed, and maybe accepted, party line, but this absence adds to the farcical element of Valentine’s attraction to her. Powell’s Valentine is decidedly mercurial, a man who changes tactics as needed, and we can’t even pin his self-awareness on him as a constant truth about the guy. Gloria seems immovable while he is movement itself, and both are very much in the head, cerebral. We wonder if his male attraction to females is a male self-indulgence, since all the chemistry is concocted in his own head, no matter who or what she might be. So it’s interesting that Gloria, who seems to have no passion other than the one that mirrors her mom’s beliefs, does cough up a past of some kind with men in Madeira and is quite adept at coming on to Valentine. Or is she an innocent gone wild? After all, when Gloria was kissed, “she appeared to like it.” And does this all seem rather arbitrary? Or is life itself, over and over, a farce of arbitrariness as depicted here? You never can tell.
This good time had by all production is designed by Leslie Frankish, with lighting by Kimberly Purtell, projections by Cameron Davis, movement by Jane Johanson, and original music and sound designed by John Gzowski, each one with imaginative clout and beach ball seats included.
According to director Jim Mezon’s notes, this production is dedicated to the memory of actor Jack Medley who worked at the Shaw Festival between the years of 1964 and 1995 and, yes, we all do miss his presence there very much.