Shaw Festival one-act plays present a mixed bag this year

There are two short, one-act plays at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake this season, the traditional lunchtime offering at the Court House Theatre, and the Studio Theatre production, which opened just last week.  Let's take a look at both this week as we continue with our reviews of Shaw Festival offerings this season.

The Lunchtime show is traditionally lighter fare, a one-act play designed to send you out into the street for a late lunch with a smile on your face.  This year, however, a bit of a break with tradition as Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell has programmed an early one-act musical by a very young Leonard Bernstein as both composer and lyricist, Trouble in Tahiti.  The trouble with Trouble, as it were, is not really the musical's fault, per se.  We now know Bernstein as the clever and inventive writer of such musicals as On The Town and of course, West Side Story; we expect more of the same even in Bernstein's earlier works, too.  But this is young Bernstein:  he was, after all, only about 34 years of age when Trouble premiered in 1952, and although we hear passages that will suggest later successes for him, particularly West Side Story, this is a more youthful-sounding Bernstein still finding his way in the world of musicals.

The premise of the work, according to Bernstein, was to strip away the shiny veneer of suburban contentment and reveal instead the void that comes when a couple don't communicate and ultimately begin to drift apart.  The wife is bored and ignored by the husband who is an executive on the ladder to success; they are augmented by what Bernstein called "a Greek Chorus born of the radio commercial" meaning, essentially, they are singing jazzy rhythms to complement the action unfolding between the two onstage.  The wife is played by Elodie Gillett and her husband by handsome Mark Uhre.  Both are quite good, and they fit their respective roles well; together with the chorus all under the direction of Jay Turvey, this is a nice little slice of American life from exactly 60 years ago.

That being said, one would have to think this lunchtime offering will have somewhat limited appeal, being an acquired taste for some.  I quite like parts of it, actually, but it is not really one of Bernstein's best efforts. so this one scores a two out of four stars.  Trouble in Tahiti continues at the Court House Theatre until October 7th, beginning at 11:30 am incidentally.

Now, on to the riskier offering at the Studio Theatre, Helen's Necklace by playwright Carol Frechette, which opened August 11th and continues only until August 31st.  The past few seasons, the Studio Theatre offering has been one of the late-season hits of the Festival; last year, for example, Top Dog Underdog was one of the most riveting evenings of theatre anywhere.  But this year, well, close but no cigar, unfortunately.

Helen's Necklace was the first of Frechette's plays to examine the horrors of contemporary war, although she herself is quoted as saying she really didn't write about war itself but rather the losses felt by those affected by war.  At any rate, it is pretty grim, as was the Beirut of the 90s Frechette experienced first-hand while living there for a few short weeks.  The play premiered there in 2002 and was received warmly, she says in the Playwright's Notes in the programme at Shaw; the English premiere of the work was at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto in 2003, directed by Eda Holmes and starring Susan Coyne and Sanjay Talwar.  Talwar reprises his role here at Shaw, playing opposite Tara Rosling as Helen.  Sanjay plays several roles, primarily the cab driver in war-torn Beirut taking Helen on an adventure first to look for the necklace she has lost, but ultimately to discover much more about the people she is living amongst and indeed, herself.

The play is short, only an hour long with no intermission, and is a bit of a tough go given the grim nature of the storyline.  But there is humour as well, and a musical score that brings back memories of exotic locales, courtesy of John Millard.  Rosling and Talwar deliver great performances, but even so, you might be tempted to ask at the end of it all, "What in the world happened here?"

Helen's Necklace won't have the powerful impact of last year's Top Dog Underdog to be sure, but it is an interesting sidelight to the rest of the Shaw season.  It clearly won't appeal to everyone, to be sure, so I'll give it a two out of four stars.  It runs at the Studio Theatre until August 31st.

Enjoy the theatre!

August 20th, 2012.