Raising the Tone: The 1989 Shaw Festival

area). Happily for them, the developers of the erstwhile Renaissance building were notputto the expenseofa new fence, since historical specificity was inessential to their promotional classicism. The real estatedevelopers are doubtless using carefully devised marketing strategies to target a body of consumers whose age, means, tastes, and aspirations make them susceptible to allusions (currently very common in all kinds ofadvertising ) to the"classical."Sincethe idea has migrated thus far from the realmofthe arts there is nothing to be gained (except money, perhaps) by trying to cling to it. In the 1990 season the Stratford Festival will extend its repertory into productions of Racine, Congreve, Storey, and Pollock. Insofaras itcanforget about beingclassical for a seasonand, as well as striving for technical excellence, apply its best critical intelligence to a series of distinctplays mostly from remotecultural traditions, it will be the better able to match productions to repertory. For at Stratford, as elsewhere, beingclassical is somethingofan alibi for artistic practices that tend to keep actors, designers, and directors, as well as spectators, safely within the bounds of the familiar; that firmly exclude the subversions of"poor theatre"; that tend to strain out, through filters oftheatrical normativeness, whatever is most interesting in the plays' representations of their times and whatever is problematic, and therefore vital, in our own theatre. MICHAELI. SIDNELL Raising the Tone: The 1989 Shaw Festival Christopher Newton, who now has been at the helm of the Shaw Festival for over adecade, moved his companyoutof the stagnant shallows of its 1988 season into clear, deep waters ofinspirationand regeneration. Last season, when the general standard (with few precious ex160 ceptions) seemed to be on a par with that ofhumdrum summerstock, there was no unifying artistic vision, no consistencyof tone, no depth to the company. But with a few bold strokes in 1989 Newton changed all that. By matching his directors , for the mostpart, with material suited to their skillsand temperaments, he raised the interpretative level ofthe productions. By bringing renowned Soviet designer, Eduard Kochergin, to the Festival, he performed an actofmajor reinterpretationon Shaw. By welcoming back Susan Wright and Barry MacGregor, he gave additional body and colour to the middle weights. But, mostofall, by inviting the participation of William Hutt, a leading actor on any stage, he helped raise the tone of his whole theatrical enterprise. Tone, to my way of thinking, is not simply a matter of sound, intonation, pitch, or modulation of voice. It is not restricted to mannerisms of speech or physiology. By tone I mean an attitude to craft, a resiliency in characterization, and a quality ofheightened feeling and action. In these terms, tone was bestevinced in all the productionson the Festival stage (except for the gaudy, overripe Once In A Lifetime in a reprise from last season), all the shows at the Court House (even in the failed version of Peer Gynt), and in An Inspector Calls at the Royal George. There were lapses, it is true, at the Royal George. They included Ronnie Burkett's marionette diversions Shakes Versus Shav andA Glimpse ofReality, and the musical Good News, but such lapses owedas much to their material as to limitations of style. Burkett's puppet shows, staged within a miniature proscenium frame and deliberately pitched to adults, could not transcend their texts - in the first case, one ofShaw's impish playlets specifically for puppets,and in the second, once a music-hall vehicle for Granville Barker - although there was vaudeville charm in the staging. The Shakespeare doll indulged in fustian, its rhetorical strings obviously at the mercy ofShaw's "ecstasy ofself-conceit," but the best fun came less from the playlet, with all its Shakespearean parody, knockdown imRevue detudes canadiennes Vol. 24, No. 4 (Hivu 1989-90 Winter) pudence, and Shavian "raspberries," than from the accidental entanglement of the puppeteer's strings, which occasioned the ad-lib, "O what a tangled web we weave!" Thesecond playlet, also by Shawalthough written forty years earlier, was a tomfoolery in the vein of an exaggerated Jacobean drama, but here, while thestrain on Burkett's vocal repertoire was too much, there were fine physical distinctions among the puppet figures. Burkett remained in full view throughout, working a little too hard fordiminishing...