Evaluation of the 2009 Shaw Festival season

Even with Jackie Maxwell, the Shaw Festival seasons have been pretty predictable, which of course suits me well. For example, since The Devil’s Disciple hadn’t been seen at Niagara-on-the-Lake since 1996, it was overdue for one of two slots for Shaw’s plays, and a good bet to show up in 2009.

And since 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 bill 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. Maybe 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 had never seen this play, but we loved what Shaw’s repertory company did with the O’Neill comedy Ah, Wilderness two years ago, and wanted to see what would be fine with an O’Neill play with a bit more angst.

And we admire the work of director Joseph Ziegler, who was at his best 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 feature three of Noel Coward’s one-act plays: Red Peppers, Fumed Oak and Shadow Play. Two of these have songs woven into the plot, one (Fumed Oakis pure comedy. 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 his 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 anybody 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 are 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’re looking forward to Benedict Campbell, a fantastic song and dance man on Mack and Mabel a couple of years ago. This work will last for less than two months, from July 31 to September 20. We will 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 biggest venue of the Shaw Festival, the Festival Theatre. Deborah Hay and Patrick Galligan, who were superb in 2008’s 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 in, 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 Pontillism (paintings consisting of many small dots) for which Seurat was known. Steven Sutcliffe (Seurat) and Julie Martelli (his lover “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 the same time.

6. The Devil’s Disciple (George Bernard Shaw) Honestly, Shaw’s works are what we look forward to the most. Shaw’s “main” play on the show would normally be at the top of our list. But we didn’t really like The Devil’s Disciple when we saw it in 1996, we didn’t enjoy reading it afterward, and we can’t help but resent the old leftist for feeling free to moralize about the American war for independence.

On the other hand, we know Bernard Shaw better than we did twelve years ago, so perhaps our encounter with the work 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 he belongs in the Shaw Festival.

7. Born Yesterday (Garson Kanin) By coincidence, Emsworth, who likes old movies, saw the 1950 film, starring Judy Holliday, and based on the original stage production, not long ago on Turner Classic Movies. So how do we feel about seeing a new theatrical version with Deborah Hay as Billie Dawn? It’s okay, we guess.

8. Ways of the Heart (Noel Coward) Coward’s three entire shows at the Shaw in 2009 were collectively titled Tonight at 8:30, and Coward intended for them to perform as a group, though not necessarily in any particular order.

This is the third of the Tonight at 8:30 shows: The Astonished Heart, Family Album and Ways and Means, directed by Blair Williams, at the Shaw Festival’s smallest venue, the Courthouse Theatre, which may well be the best venue for Niagara. -on-the-Lake to watch the short form of Noel Coward. We know Ways and Means, an absolutely pitiful portrait of a young couple making fun of their socialite friends. The cast includes Claire Juillien, David Jansen and one of my favorites at the Shaw, Laurie Paton.

The Shaw Festival presents Shaw’s ten one-act acts on the same day, starting at 9:30am, on three separate days (8 August, 29 August and 19 September 2009). Too intense for us.

9. Star Chamber (Noel Coward) This one-act play by Coward will be Shaw’s lunch 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 a single performance and did not publish it with other works. We doubt 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 Garcia 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 work by Lorca?

11. In Good King Charles’s Golden Days (George Bernard Shaw) Even with the talented Peter Hutt (unfortunately, it looks as if he’s 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 Shaw’s favorite works. 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 risk. Shaw’s works are two of our least favorites. But we think we’ll like it this season.

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