Evaluation of the 2009 Shaw Festival season
Even with Jackie Maxwell, the Shaw Festival seasons have been pretty predictable, which of course suits me. For example, since The Devil’s Disciple hadn’t been seen at Niagara-on-the-Lake since 1996, it was overdue for one of the two slots for Shaw’s plays, and a good bet to appear in 2009.
And given that the Shaw Festival did an O’Neill play three years ago, which we assumed and hoped would be the start of an O’Neill cycle, an O’Neill play on the 2009 lineup would have been a good guess ( in fact, I’ll get A Moon for the Misbegotten).
We would have also put money into another Noel Coward play in 2009, because Coward is always in rotation at the Shaw Festival. Perhaps The Vortex? Or another pass at Cavalcade?
Well, the schedule is out now, but there won’t be a big Coward play. Instead, there will be ten minor plays by Coward at the Shaw Festival this year, each in one act. They will be presented as part of four different shows. This year, Bernard Shaw will not be the most watched playwright at the Shaw Festival.
We’ll see most of the 2009 card, as usual. What shows are we most looking forward to?
1. A Moon for the Misbegotten (Eugene O’Neill) We’ve never seen this play, but we loved what Shaw’s repertory company did with O’Neill’s comedy Ah, Wilderness two years ago, and we wanted to see what it would be like. well with an O’Neill play with a little more angst.
And we admire the work of director Joseph Ziegler, who was in top form with Bernard Shaw’s Getting Married in the season that just ended (see Emsworth’s review); he also directed Ah, Wilderness. It will be at the Courthouse Theatre. The formidable Jim Mezon will play Josie Hogan’s father.
2. Play, Orchestra, Play (Noel Coward) This show will be made up of three of Noel Coward’s one-act works: Red Peppers, Fumed Oak and Shadow Play. Two of these have songs woven into the plot, one (the pure comedy of Fumed Oakis. There is no big musical at the Shaw Festival this year; these take their place. It will be at the Royal George Theatre, directed by Christopher Newton.
We know quite a few Coward songs but not, in general, which of his shows they are from. But searching our library, we found that Coward and stage partner Gertrude Lawrence played George and Lily Pepper, a music hall song-and-dance team, in the Red Peppers in 1936 (so this show is going to be animated). We also find that one of the two Red Peppers songs is “Has Anyone Seen Our Ship?” while Coward’s two songs on Shadow Play are “You Were There” and “Then”.
3. The Entertainer (John Osborne) The English anti-establishment John Osborne is legendary; he is the original angry young man. But we have never seen his work. Existentialism and vaudeville will be a curious combination.
We’re also very curious to see the Shaw Festival’s new small performance space, which is apparently the rehearsal studio in the Festival Theatre. And we look forward to Benedict Campbell, a fantastic song and dance man on Mack and Mabel a couple of years ago. This work will last less than two months, from July 31 to September 20. We’ll get our tickets in advance.
4. Brief Encounters (Noel Coward) Three more one-act plays by Noel Coward in this show: Still Life, We Were Dancing and Hands Across the Sea. It’s in the Shaw Festival’s biggest venue, the Festival Theatre. Deborah Hay and Patrick Galligan, who were superb in 2008 in After the Dance, are in the cast.
We know one of these works: Still Life, also known as Brief Encounter. It’s a painfully accurate sketch of an illicit love story. We know and love Coward’s highly polished short stories; stories and one-act plays are said to be first cousins. We think art director Jackie Maxwell is Shaw’s best director. All in all, our expectations for this show are high.
5. Sunday in the Park with George (James Lapine, Stephen Sondheim) Somehow we’ve never seen this musical, but we surely know the painting it spins on, and so do you. It’s “Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte” by Georges Seurat. Like Ferris Bueller and his friends, we have admired him at the Art Institute of Chicago. Stephen Sondheim’s musical is about Seurat and the creation of his painting.
We also don’t know the songs on the show, only that they are said to be written in a style similar to the pontilism (paintings consisting of many small dots) that Seurat was known for. Steven Sutcliffe (Seurat) and Julie Martelli (his lover of his “Dot”) will have the lead roles. With Sunday in the Park with George, we can indulge our interests in art, music, and theater all at once.
6. The Devil’s Disciple (George Bernard Shaw) Honestly, Shaw’s works are what we most look forward to. Shaw’s “main” play on the show would normally be at the top of our list. But we didn’t much like The Devil’s Disciple when we saw it in 1996, haven’t enjoyed reading it since, and can’t help but resent the old leftist for feeling free to moralize about America’s war for independence.
On the other hand, we know Bernard Shaw better than we did twelve years ago, so perhaps our encounter with the play will be different this time. And Evan Buliung will play Dick Dudgeon. We’re big fans, and while we really liked Buliung in The Taming of the Shrew and Romeo and Juliet in Stratford in 2008, we think it belongs in the Shaw Festival.
7. Born Yesterday (Garson Kanin) Coincidentally, Emsworth, who likes old movies, saw the 1950 film, starring Judy Holliday, and based on the original stage production, not long ago at Turner Classic Movies. So how do we feel about seeing a new theatrical version with Deborah Hay as Billie Dawn? Okay, we guess.
8. Ways of the Heart (Noel Coward) Coward’s entire three shows at the Shaw in 2009 were collectively titled Tonight at 8:30, and Coward intended them to perform as a group, though not necessarily in any particular order.
This is the third of Tonight at 8:30 shows: The Astonished Heart, Family Album and Ways and Means, directed by Blair Williams, at Shaw Festival’s smallest venue, the Courthouse Theatre, which may well be the best venue for Niagara. -on-the-Lake to see Noel Coward’s short form. We know Ways and Means, an utterly pitiful portrait of a young couple making fun of their friends from high society. The cast includes Claire Juillien, David Jansen and one of my favorites at the Shaw, Laurie Paton.
The Shaw Festival presents all ten of Shaw’s one-act acts on the same day, starting at 9:30 a.m., on three separate days (August 8, August 29, and September 19, 2009). Too intense for us.
9. Star Chamber (Noel Coward) This one-act play by Coward will be Shaw’s luncheon offering at the Courthouse Theatre. Shaw’s promotional materials say it’s “rarely produced,” but that’s an understatement. Coward was apparently not happy about it; in 1936 he took it out after only one performance and did not publish it with other works. We doubt that Coward was a good judge of his own work.
10. Albertine in Five Times (Michel Tremblay) In our parochial ignorance, all we know about Michel Tremblay, the French-Canadian playwright, is that he wrote Hosanna, the extravagant play with which the late Richard Monette (longtime artistic director at the Stratford Festival) made a name for himself as an actor in 1974.
Albertine at Five Times appears to have an all-female cast, as does Gabriel García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba, one of Jackie Maxwell’s adventurous play choices early in her tenure at the Shaw. The cast will include Mary Haney and Patricia Hamilton.
What we want to know is, when are we going to have another Lorca play?
11. In Good King Charles’s Golden Days (George Bernard Shaw) Even with the talented Peter Hutt (sadly, he looks like he defected to the Stratford Festival for the 2009 season) as King Charles, we’re reminded of Shaw’s 1997 version of this Bernard Shaw as an extraordinarily talkative, sleep-inducing play, even by Shaw’s standards of locution. It’s pretty low on our list of favorite works by Shaw. But the 2009 cast for this show is very strong, with Benedict Campbell, Laurie Paton, Lisa Codrington, Mary Haney, and Graeme Somerville.
All in all. . . We think putting all your eggs in one basket with four shows consisting of one-act plays no one has ever heard of, and not including any popular musicals on the schedule, is a bit of a gamble. Shaw’s works are two of our least favorites. But we think we will like it this season.