Risks: The 1985 Shaw Festival

were trapped in their roles and perhaps pawns in the obscure but sinister game being played by Alan Scarfe's Duke. When he addressed other characters he rarely made eye contact with them and often even had his back turned. Scarfe's richly assured and bland delivery distanced him from his words and, like that of many politicians, made it impossible to know what he was thinking. (His performance was the best-spoken of the season.) But the evasiveness wasn't limited to him. All the dialogue in the production was a game ofcat and mouse, the interchanges between Isabella (Barbara March) and both her brother Claudio (Joseph Ziegler) and would-be ravisher (Nicholas Pennell) being masterpieces of subtle indirection. By contrast, the irrepressible truth-telling and genuine sympathy for others of the street-wise Lucio (Richard McMillan) cut through the fine declarations of the outwardly respectable figures and happily discomfited the Duke. To borrow Lucio's description of himself, the whole production was like a burr it stuck. Bogdanov eloquently demonstrated that the frequently heard distinction between "being true to Shakespeare" and "being relevant" is a false antithesis. We come then to the Festival's future and to John Neville, its new Artistic Director. The challenges he faces are awesome. Despite what will probably be still higher ticket prices, he must somehow substantially increase attendance above this season's average of roughly 65 percent seat-occupancy. And, while seeking to restore the Festival's popularity with theatre-goers, he must also convince fund-granting bodies that the Festival is an invaluable cultural asset because of the authority of its productions . It is a job that only a gambler, or a lover, would take, and Neville shows clear signs of being both. He exhorted the Young Company (which he directed for the season) that "fear kills most things. It kills marriages, governments, boards of directors, sex." Displaying a fine disdain for fear, to say nothing of 148 prudence, he has elected next season to stage the three least-known and leastacclaimed of Shakespeare's late plays: Cymbeline, Pericles, and Henry VIII. And in place of the Festival's surefire productions of Gilbert and Sullivan, he has chosen to expose Rodgers and Hart's 711e Boys from Syracuse to a full run on the Festival Stage. Fortunately, by dint of retaining most of this year's stalwart performers, bringing William Hun and Martha Henry back to the fold, and searching for television and cinema stars for box-office appeal, Neville is assembling what promises to be one of the strongest companies in years. One awaits next season with some apprehensiveness (but not fear) and much anticipation. F.B. TROMLY Trent University Risks: The 1985 Shaw Festival It was, most ofall, a season of risks - ofsometimes obscure, difficult plays or subtly complex ones undertaken to test the gamut of an audience's intelligence and theatrical sensibility. There were the risks, too, of a delicate parable and a pageant of imagery and sentiment. Sometimes the risks had the support of formidable technological and directorial resourcefulness; sometimes, however, the risks were doomed from the startsomewhat stunned by textural miscalculations . There were only three risks that succeeded - a very small number in a season of nine ventures, but the significance of the successes lay, in part, in the nature and scale of the hazards. That Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton's One For The Pot succeeded was less surprising , for instance, than that Noel Coward's Cavalcade moved so impressively , or that Shaw's John Bull's Other Island made us see the quick Revue d'erudes canadiennes Vol. 20, No. 4 (Hfrer 1985-86 Wimer) pungency and subtlety of political satire. It was almost enough for us to forgive the lameness of 771e Inca ofPemsalem, the mediocrities in Naughty Mmietta, the absurdist extravagance of Tropical Madness, the languors of Heartbreak House, and the marred delicacy of The Madwoman of Chai/lot. But nothing seemed worth the risks ofMurder On 171e Nile and 171e Women. Agatha Christie is still the world's most widely read author in English, but Murder is one of the most absurd murder mysteries ever to hit the stage. Forget the...