Two more winners at the Shaw Festival

So far this season has seen many more positives than negatives at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake this season, and today we'll look at two of the popular winners you can catch this summer.

French Without Tears by Terence Rattigan is at the Royal George Theatre until September 15th, and it is an interesting piece.  Unless you are fluent in French, which I unfortunately am not, you may find yourself a little lost in the early going with this one.  One of my friends in fact started looking for the exits in the first half-hour or so, but eventually as things picked up he was glad he stayed, as indeed I was.  It is, to be honest, a little difficult to get into in the first half-hour or so as some of the characters in the play, especially Michael Ball as Monsieur Maingot, speak some of their lines in French and you are left to translate yourself through the English lines of other characters.  Not too difficult, really, but it is something to keep in mind while considering if you will go to this play or not.

Once you get beyond that, the play picks up and you find yourself watching a real gem of a play by Rattigan that dates from 1936 when it premiered at the Criterion Theatre in London.  That would have been a play to see, incidentally, as the first production featured a young Rex Harrison and Jessica Tandy.  Here, we have a good, solid cast of Shaw regulars such as Martin Happer as Lieutenant-Commander Rogers and Julie Martell as the beguiling Jacqueline Maingot.  Both are great in their respective roles, with Martell especially so as she is sexy in a very honest sort of way, if that makes sense.  Of course, Ball as Monsieur Maingot is a delight to watch, showing his bilingualism to great effect along the way.

Others to watch for are Robin Evan Willis as a very sexy and tall Diana Lake, who catches the eye of most of the other men at some point or another in the play, and Billy Lake as Kenneth Lake.  Lots of Lakes in this play, I know...

The play is a funny yet affectionate look at a collection of young Brit men studying French to help them launch diplomatic careers and thereby assume positions of power in the still-thriving British Empire.  Worldly they are; in areas of women, romance and yes sex, well, decidedly not.  This sets the scene for some very funny moments that will make you forget the early going in short order.

Kate Lynch directs and William Schmuck designed the lovely set, and both handle their duties in exemplary fashion.  It may not be for everyone, but for most, this will be a bit of a sleeper at the Shaw Festival this season.  French Without Tears is a solid three out of four stars and plays at the Royal George Theatre until September 15th.

Over at the Festival Theatre, the hot ticket this season, aside from Ragtime of course, is His Girl Friday, adapted by John Guare in 2003 from the well-known play The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur and the film version of the play, which also came to be known as His Girl Friday.

The original play, The Front Page, was a big success on Broadway when it opened in 1928, running for 258 performances.  Several stage revivals and movie remakes have come along since then, bringing us to this more recent updating by Guare, which premiered at the National Theatre in London in June of 2003.

The time period has been updated from the 1920s of The Front Page to 1939, so there are many references to Hitler and his march on Europe, which while not detracting from the fun of the play per se, appear to be handled rather clumsily at times.  The two main protagonists, newspaper dictator Walter Burns and his ace reporter were also changed from two men to man and woman, with Hildy, the reporter, being Burns' ex-wife who has found a new guy and wants to leave the business.  It takes a skilled director and cast to pull it all together and pull this thing off, and Shaw has a spectacular cast lined up for this production that makes it a bona fide hit.

Where do you begin with this all-star cast?  Start with Kevin Hanchard, Jeff Meadows, Guy Bannerman, Neil Barclay and Kevin McGarry as the hard-nosed newspaper reporters from competing newspapers, add in Peter Millard as the oddly eccentric Woodenshoes, and mix in Ric Reid as the kindly newspaper reporter and frustrated poet Bensinger and Thom Allison as the money man Diamond Louie and you have a recipe for a great comedy.  All these characters are fabulous, with Ric Reid as Bensinger especially so in the second act.  But when you top if off with Benedict Campbell as Walter Burns and his ex-wife Hildy played by Nicole Underhay, the comedic mix just explodes from the stage like a team of unbridled horses.

Campbell and Underhay are simply great together, reacting to each other like the proverbial oil and water.  They are perfectly matched and keep pace line for line throughout this hectic, epic farce.  Campbell, especially, has so many lines and directions to go in, it boggles the mind he manages to keep  it all together.

The rest of the supporting cast is certainly up to the task as well:  Lorne Kennedy as Pinkus, Thom Marriott as The Mayor and Krista Colosimo as Mollie Malloy as a few more examples of the comedic gold you find in this production.

The Shaw production of The Front Page in 1994 was a huge hit that season, although I was not a great fan of that production, as I recall.  This new updating, even with the racist and sexist comments flying about that seem somewhat appropriate to the era depicted here, just seems to work better for me.  Even with the Hitler reference.  I have no idea why, it just does.

His Girl Friday continues at the Festival Theatre until October 5th, but I wouldn't be at all surprised if the run is extended.  It rates a very strong three out of four stars.

Enjoy the theatre!

August 4th, 2012.