Final two productions at Shaw Festival well worth making time for

During the final two weeks of August, I spent a couple of pleasant afternoons at the Shaw Festival, catching the final two late-season offerings, and both were well worth making time for. But you'd better hurry, as they have a relatively short shelf life.

The first show was Linda Griffiths' Age of Arousal, a play from 2007 that deals with the time period of Shaw's mandate, namely the Victorian era. The story takes inspiration from a play by George Gissing that actually dates from the era, titled The Odd Women. I suspect most people will assume the late 19th century might have been a sexually repressed age, if styles and mindsets are anything to go by. Yet in Griffiths' play, aptly titled Age of Arousal, she suggests there might have been more than meets the eye. When you consider eligible women far outnumbered eligable men in Britain back in the 1880s, something simply had to give.

Enter into this equation the lone male in the play, handsome and charming Everard Barfoot, played with great style by Gray Powell. He visits his cousin Mary, played by Donna Belleville, who runs a school to teach young women how to use that new-fangled instrument of the day, the typewriter. Mary has a lover, her business partner Rhoda Nunn, who eventually falls hard for Mary's cousin Everard and comes ever so close to accepting his offer of marriage. Ultimately, Rhoda stays with the school, continuing to be a good example to the students who come through the school. But how she comes to that decision makes for a tantalizing play full of interesting twists and turns.

The one really significant aspect of the dialogue you have to get used to is Griffiths' use of what she calls "thoughtspeak", where characters in the play switch with lightening speed from polite dialogue to a volcanic eruption of sexual desire in words in a split second. It does take some getting used to, but the skilled cast in this Shaw Festival production pulls it off with great precision.

The cast is very strong, with Belleville, of course, leading the pack as Mary Barfoot. Jenny Young as Rhoda Nunn is complex, compassionate, strong and sexually repressed; in other words, she is a joy to watch in this production. Kelli Fox does a fine job with the role of Virginia Madden, who controls her alcoholism by dressing like a man; Sharry Flett is fabulous as Alice Madden, and Zarrin-Darnell-Martin does a great job as Monica Madden, the first of the women to find physical comfort in Everard's arms.

Director Jackie Maxwell and designer Sue LePage have each made the production unique, and Valerie Moore's 'movement' choreography brings added inventiveness to the show. Age of Arousal continues at the Court House Theatre until October 10th, and rates a strong three out of four stars.

The final production of the season opened late August at the small studio theatre next to the larger Festival Theatre, and only continues until September 12th. Again, a modern play, this time by contemporary British playwright Caryl Churchill, who lived for a time in Montreal back in the 50s, Serious Money deals with the cut-throat world of sex and money very much a part of the British financial markets following the so-called Big Bang, which deregulated the financial markets, opening them up to these young horses whose ambition knows no bounds. Margaret Thatcher was into her final term of office in 1987 when the play was written and set, and she gets a jovial musical thank-you at the end of the play. Despite the dating of the play at the end, this is a story just a relevant today, given the upheaval in financial markets over the past couple of years that we've seen.

Like Age of Arousal, the dialogue brings with it certain challenges. Griffiths decided it would be most effective to have the actors speak in verse, not unlike Shakespeare did, so that will take some getting used to. But more than that, the play is written so several actors - if not all of them - will be speaking at the same time in certain scenes, and that makes it quite difficult if not downright annoying to try to get your head around, especially in the first act. By the second act, things settle down somewhat and the dialogue, although still rather coarse, makes for a much more satisfying experience.

The cast is the gold-standard of ensembles, even for the Shaw Festival; one cannot imagine a lesser cast managing to pull this off as convincingly. The cast highlights include Lisa Codrington making a striking impression in several roles, including the powerful Marylou Baines; Nicola Correia-Damude in several roles, especially as sultry Jacinta Condor; and Ali Momen, cool and collected as the banker and commentator Zackerman. Other standouts in several roles include Steven Sutcliffe, Ken James Stewart, David Schurmann and Graeme Somerville. The one to watch, however, is young Marla McLean, making a very strong impression as the inquisitive Scilla Todd, trying to get to the bottom of the disappearance of her brother Jake, and just how he amassed such a fortune.

At the performance I attended, a few audience members left after the first act, as the language is rather colourful, to say the least, filled with expletives from start to finish. But they serve a purpose here, as Churchill notes in her essay in the programme; this is how the traders actually talked when she wrote the play. I don't think you can do the play without all the swearing, and frankly, by the end of the play you almost become desensitized to them, much as the characters have become desensitized to the feelings and desires of those around them.

Serious Money is clearly not for everyone, but for those willing to invest the time, it is a biting commentary on our greedy, overzealous king-makers, and the damage that can be done over time. This is a prime example of the Shaw Festival reaching beyond their - and our - comfort zone, and the results are exhilarating. It rates a very strong four out of four stars, and continues only until September 12th. So don't wait: catch one of the final performances if you can!

September 3rd, 2010.