This year at the Shaw Festival in Niagara on the Lake, we watched three thoroughly enjoyable British plays in two days—a farce, a screwball comedy of manners and a psychological thriller.
Our first show was a matinee performance of the British farce “
One for the Pot” written in 1959 by Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton and first performed in West-End London in 1961. The setting is the country manor of wealthy mill owner Jonathan Hardcastle, who wishes to bestow a gift of £10,000 to the son of his deceased partner, but only if that son is the sole living heir. Hardcastle advertises in the paper in search of the heir and Billy Hickory-Wood, a simple-minded, lower-classed house painter, arrives to claim the inheritance, accompanied by his scheming companion Charlie. Troubles arise when more Hickory-Wood identical brothers (previously unknown to one another) also arrive in answer to the advertisement. Rupert Hickory-Wood is a posh upper-class gentleman while Michael Hickory-Wood is an Irish con-man and pickpocket. Hilarity ensues as Charlie and Hardcastle’s greedy butler Jugg desperately try to conceal the fact that there are multiple Hickory-Woods. This leads to mistaken identities and many rapid entrances and exits through various doors and egresses leading to the study, a hidden walk-in liquor cabinet, the garden, the ballroom, the upstairs bedrooms, and even a large chest with a fold-down lid. While all the Hickory-Wood brothers are played by the same actor, body doubles and sleight-of-hand staging make it appear as if several of them are on stage at the same time.
We were especially excited to watch this play since we greatly admired the director Chris Abraham and lead actor Peter Fernandes (playing all the Hickory-Woods) from their work at Crow’s Theatre. Unfortunately, because we attended the afternoon matinee, Hickory-Wood was played by understudy Sepehr Reybod instead of Fernandes. Despite our initial disappointment, this romp was still so much fun to watch. The timing and physicality of the entries and exits were impeccable as one Hickory-Wood left (or was shoved) through one doorway and another one appeared within seconds through another. After a while, you forget that the brothers are all played by the same actor although their characters are always easily distinguishable through their accents, vocabulary, demeanor and to a lessor extent, wardrobe.
We watched our next show that same evening. This time, it was the 2013 play “
Jeeves & Wooster in Perfect Nonsense” by playwrights Robert and David Goodale. The brothers took elements of the plot from the beloved 1938 P.G. Wodehouse novel “
Code of the Woosters” and turned it into a play within a play. Bertie Wooster had a madcap weekend as described in that book and was convinced by his friends to reenact the events as a one-man stage play. He explains this to the audience while breaking the proverbial fourth wall. After a few humorous minutes of trying to play the roles of both himself and his butler Jeeves (“then he said., and then I said..”), Bertie enlists Jeeves as well as his Aunt Dahlia’s butler Seppings to portray the other roles in the story.
Jeeves helpfully pushes out moveable sets and props to create the proper setting for each scene. With this background established, the three are now ready to enact the convoluted tale which involves a silver cow creamer, a lost notebook, a stolen policeman’s helmet, and the romantic relationships of Gussie Fink-Nottle and Madeline Bassett, as well as Stephanie (Stiffy) Bing and Harold Pinker. Bertie gets entangled in trying to resolve multiple conflicting pressures while fending off the aggressions from his nemesis, the retired magistrate Sir Watkyn Bassett (Madeline’s father) and Basett’s henchman Rodney Spode. In the end, as always, it is Jeeves to the rescue, coming up with the solution to all of Bertie’s problems.
What makes “J&W in Perfect Nonsense” unique from a typical Jeeves & Wooster production is the gimmick of Jeeves and Seppings playing multiple roles and the amazingly quick costume changes that they make when alternating between characters. In addition to himself, Jeeves portrays Sir Watkyn Bassett, his daughter Madeline, Gussie Fink-Nottle and Stiffy Bing while Seppings takes on the roles of Aunt Dahlia, the antique shop keeper, Sir Watkyn’s butler Butterfield, police officer Constable Oates, and the malvolent Roderick Spode. In a talkback, the actors talk about having up to 5 dressers backstage ready to help them switch costumes, with some changes taking mere seconds. One particularly impressive and recurring costume change involves the Spode character leaping into a contraption that elevates him by several feet to create an imposing figure in a trenchcoat. Actor Travis Seetoo, who plays Seppings playing Spode, spoke of how dangerous that device was and how he had injured himself multiple times. At one point in the second act, Jeeves comes on stage with the right side of his body dressed as Sir Watkyn and the left side as Madelaine as “they” carry on a conversation with each other. This is the second show that we have watched where this technique was used.
The next day, we watched our final show, the mystery-thriller
Sleuth, written by Anthony Shaffer in 1970. While the play had been a great success in both London’s West End and on Broadway, wining the Tony award for Best Play, it is perhaps even more widely known for the
1972 film adaptation starring Lawrence Olivier and Michael Caine. Sleuth involves a psychological battle of wits and clash of class between the older, wealthy, upper-class mystery writer Andrew Wyle and Milo Tindle, the younger, less privileged immigrant that Andrew’s wife has taken as her lover. What starts out as a seemingly cordial meeting turns into a cat and mouse game with multiple twists and turns, and potentially dire consequences. In addition to being a fascinating play with excellent performances by the two leads, this particular production coincidentally was the directorial debut for Peter Fernandes who we missed seeing in One for the Pot, and the actor playing Milo was once again Sepehr Reybod, showing his range in an entirely different role in a totally different genre of play compared to the farce that we watched him in the day before.
Both Jeeves & Wooster and Sleuth were mounted at the
Court House Theatre, a retired space forced back into use by the renovation (a.k.a. demolition and rebuilding) of the Royal George Theatre. While the set for Jeeves was relatively simple, as a reflection of the play within a play, the set for Sleuth was more elaborate. This made it all the more impressive to know that the two shows run back-to-back on consecutive days meaning the sets switch daily and sometimes even within hours between the afternoon and evening shows.
Despite the varying genres of each of the plays that we watched, from fast-paced farce to comedy of manners to tense psychological drama, they all had something in common. The theme of class distinction acts as an underlying thread that runs through all three shows. In One for the Pot, the contrast between dull-witted lower-class Billy vs. refined upper-class Rupert is apparent, as is Charlie’s fear that Billy will be looked down upon or even rejected because of his lowly status and menial job. In Jeeves & Wooster, although Jeeves is clearly the brains of the pair, Wooster still makes a point of reminding Jeeves who is the boss (or at least who he thinks is the boss). Typical of comedies of manners, the Jeeves & Wooster stories satirize and make fun of social behaviours and hypocrisies of the upper classes while providing the servants like Jeeves the gift of wit and verbal irony. The dialogue and action within Perfect Nonsense’s outer play accentuates these concepts. Even Sleuth highlights the class differences between Andrew and Milo, causing Andrew to look down upon and underestimate Milo for being poor and an immigrant.
All three of these plays were a blast to watch and made for a great mini 3-day road trip to Niagara on the Lake.
No comments:
Post a Comment