Two views of Stratford: II: At the Avon

II: At the Avon B. W. JACKSON After a bout with contemporary drama in the summer of 1970, the Avon Theatre turned to the nineteenth century and French farce for the season of 1971, presenting An Italian Straw Hat by Eugene Labiche and MarcMichel , and Georges Feydeau's Le Dindon under the title, There's One in Every Marriage . Some, of earnest intellect, for whom the relevant is confined to the ominous, were distressed by what they took to be a retreat from the significant to the trivial, but the multitude applauded, and merry noises came from the box-office. There are those, however , for whom both the approval of the many and healthy finances are suspect as reasons for supporting theatrical policy. They must have grounds more relevant than this: that is to say they must ask whether a major Canadian theatre ought to expend energy, talent, and the summer season in resurrecting two shamelessly concocted bits of dramatic artifice from a Paris as outmoded as the London of Victoria or Edward VII. Farce suffers from a certain brand of cultural snobbery. The doggedly high-minded will have none of it, unless, of course, it happens to be a 'psycho-farce' like last season 's The Architect and the Emperor of Assyria, 'never clapper-clawed with the palms of the vulgar.' Traditional farce, on the other hand, when it wins approval, wins it with reservations from your man of taste. He will admit to enjoying it, but with a selfdeprecatory air, as one admits to the frailty that makes one human. I suppose the reasons are not far to seek. The tightly constructed but artificial plot is not much in favour now, and it makes us uneasy to have individuals generalized into types. We prefer what may be called 'indepth confrontation' to the superficial interchange between characters that farce presents . Verbal duels that expose the feckless24 ness of each speaker rather than lacerating the opponent seem as irresponsible as the absence of recognizable intellectual content and the failure to remind us of important issues. Sex is treated frivolously. That is, perhaps, what we find most reprehensible. In short, we find that we cannot take farce seriously, and we do, I think, want to take our theatre seriously. That is another way of saying that we want our theatre to take us seriously. If it is what we refer to as 'mere' entertainment, it may amuse us but it also disparages us by suggesting that entertainment is enough. This uneasiness about something that merely entertains is the subtlest and strongest remnant of our puritan tradition. Theatre now may be irreverent, satiric, nude, scatalogical, scurrilous, profane, but it must give the impression of being concerned about our anxieties , of dealing, however indirectly, with some matter of significance. Farce gives us a Puck's eye view of mortals. We see a stage with fools upon it, and that would seem to be not entirely irrelevant as a comment on our times. The trouble is that they are silly fools. No sentiment attaches to them because they haven't the wit to see their own absurdity. They take themselves seriously, and the foolishness is omnipresent. There is no wise man in the farce, not even a Timon or a Thersites. The implication is as unrelenting as it is unflattering . Why, then, can we laugh at so cynically pessimistic a view of humanity? Probably because we don't believe it. We may have the capacity for making fools of ourselves, but we are not such fools as these, not over such trivial matters. Therefore we laugh at the antics on the stage, and explain half- -apologetically afterwards that we can relish a bit of light entertainment in the theatre, although, of course, the play was of no significance . Fadinard, in An Italian Straw Hat, sets out on a comic Odyssey in search of a replica of Revue d'etudes canadiennes the lady's hat that his horse has eaten. The farcical imperative incorporated in the plot demands that he find the straw hat before he can bed the dim-witted maiden whom he marries during the course of the play. His bride comes encumbered...