The Menopausal and Suburban: : The 1997 Stratford and Shaw Festivals

Fallowing the Arts TheAtenopausaland Suburban: The 1997 Stratford and Shaw Festivals Richard Monette's reign at Stratford· has had some glorious successes but in certain productions there has been a marked blandness usually associated with (menopausal?) artists who are merely repeating comfortable conventions. Christopher Newton's long regime at Shaw, while making some glorious discoveries about Shaw and Granville Barker, has often failed to escape a suburbanite tone. The most lavish Stratford production in 1997 was Monette's Camelot. It had an emotional idealism that sometimes transcended faery glitter and whimsical operetta sweetness . Taking as its inspiration T.H. White's The Once and Future King rather than Tennyson's Idylls of the King, Camelot is most remarkable for its gentle whimsy, bright romanticism and playful pastoral satire rather than for dark tragedy or psychological depth. Desmond Heeley's elegant silverarches, latticed gates and gleaming circular stage floor radiated the idea of the Round Table as well as the universe and the Great Chain of Being. The costumes were extravagant (some worn, itseemed, for mere seconds), ranging from a sunburst of gold and dark underwater green to burgundy richness and delicate Rosetti colours. The musical quality was also high, particularly in Cynthia Dale's warm, vulnerable Guinevere and Dan R. Chameroy's blonde, beefy, engagingly comic Lancelot. Tom McCamus made an earnest Arthur, highly engaging in the early boyishness, less compelling in the troubled brooding of the second-halfwhen the idealism yields to despair and deep love feels violated. But the fault lay more in the script's truncated drama and muddled tone thaninMcCamus's acting. Too many characters are pantomimic 154 - especially Merlin and the jousting knights. There isn't enough dramatic development in the burgeoning love of Guinevere for Lancelot, nor is there enough exposition for Arthur's subsequent melancholy . Certainly, Lerner has Mordred stir up trouble to cause the dissolution of the Round Table and Arthur's dream of a civilization without wars and betrayals, but even Michael Therriault's lithe, acrobatic, sexually ambiguous Mordred (made up to look like a skunk) failed to erase the overwhelming sense of what Kenneth 'fynan once called a11: ..adult pantomime of an unusually sympathetic kind."1 Nevertheless, Camelot was miles ahead ofthe Shaw's The Chocolate Soldier, Oscar Strauss's operetta version ofAnns and the Man that Shaw himself denounced as a "degradation of a decent comedy into a dirty farce," in which ..Bluntschli [is] made a wretched little poltroon, Sergius a coward and a boaster, Petkoff a vieux marcheur, and all the women cocottes."2 David Latham's production at the Royal George was shrilly sung, weakly choreographed and acted, and without artisticjustification. As what Richard Monette has called "the once and future theatre,''3 Stratford wishes to pay homage to past productions while charting a new course. This duality can be problematic, however. Richard III was meant to commemorate the festival's inaugural production, but what should have been an occasion to celebrate Stephen Ouimette in_ the role of "a master of many parts,"4 became merely half-finished. Ouimette did succeed in suggesting an overt theatricality in concert with Richard's relish for sharingjokes with an audience. In the wooing scene, he hid behind a statue of the crucified Christ, and then reached into Edward's coffin for a red rose petal, which he clutched in front of his groin in a gesture suggestive of a deadly wound. Ouimette had some of Richard's chilling detachment and egotism, but he was surprisingly casual in his physical characterization, content to roll or wiggle a little rather than limp. One of his major failings was in the handling of the cut-and-thrust language, and the result was not a bottled spider or hell-hound but a prankster with cruel effrontery. Revue d'tftudes canadiennes Vol. 33, No. 1 (Printemps 1998 Spring) John Wood's production seemed more concerned with surfaces than with finished details and depths of being. The wooing scene, in which Anne seemed to be in a cocktail dress in disarray, lacked conviction and erotic charge. With the exception of James Blendick's Edward, the supporting cast also fell short, either straining vocally or posturing vulgarly...