Two great shows at Shaw Festival this season

Two of the best offerings at the Shaw Festival this season are very stylish period-pieces the Festival specializes in, and in both cases they have produced absolute winners.  Let's take a look at W. Somerset Maugham's Our Betters and Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan.

Our Betters essentially brings to life on the Royal George stage the type of upper-class English society people are enjoying on PBS with Downton Abbey.  It is privileged, mannered and oh so very 1% of society.

But the upper class is only one-half of the equation here, as we quickly discover as the first act unfolds. Here are all these turn-of-the-last-century American women all getting close and personal with male members of the British aristocracy.  Why?  Well, the ladies seek titles and prestige not available at home and the men who marry them seek a fresh infusion of cash these heiresses bring with them in order to prop up their lavish lifestyles, replete with large homes with lots of upkeep.

Sounds like a grand arrangement, doesn't it?  What's love got to do with it, as Tina Turner once warbled.  Well, maybe there is some love involved here, but really, it's all about "show me the money, honey."  After all, when the ladies discuss living on about 8,ooo pounds a year, in today's terms they are talking about living on over 300-thousand pounds a year.  Can they manage on that?  Ah, there's the rub...

Much of this type of thing transpired between about 1874 and 1914, prior to the First World War that shattered this peaceful, idyllic life for so many.  Maugham wrote the play in 1915 and it was first produced in 1917 in North America, by which time most well-to-do young American women were choosing instead to stay home and marry the boy in the mansion next door.  Whether love was even involved then is open to conjecture, I suppose, but at least they married closer to home at that point.

Our Betters is a premiere at Shaw, following successful productions of Maugham's The Constant Wife and The Circle.  His plays fit this company like the proverbial glove, due in no small part to an ensemble totally immersed in the life and times of the 1% of the period.  Standout performances are provided by Claire Jullien as Lady (Pearl) Grayston, who refers to her absent husband with scorn, and Laurie Paton as Minnie, the Duchesse de Surennes, whose husband is of course a Frenchman.

Other cast members worth noting are Neil Barclay as Thornton Clay, Lorne Kennedy as Arthur Fenwick and Julie Course as Elizabeth (Bessie) Saunders, on the prowl in London to marry a lord herself.

The sets and costumes are breathtaking, with Ken McDonald's set especially elegant on the small Royal George stage.  The entire production is directed with a sure hand by Morris Panych.  There is not much of anything out of place in this elegant production.

Our Betters continues at the Royal George until October 27th, and rates a very strong 3 out of 4 stars.

Over on the larger Festival Theatre stage, one of the most-anticipated productions this season has been Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan, A Play about a Good Woman.  It continues until October 19th.

Lady Windermere's Fan is directed by Peter Hinton, whose productions over the past few seasons at the Stratford Festival have met with mixed results, I find.  Occasionally he produces a miss or near-miss, but more often than not he challenges the audience with a riveting theatrical experience; with this production of Lady Windermere's Fan he hits the bullseye.  It has style, substance, great acting and superb direction.

This is not the first time Lady Windermere has been performed at Shaw; the last production was a very respectable effort dating back to 1998.  Here, though, director Hinton throws all preconceived notions of the play out the window and totally refocuses our attention on a play with much to say even in this day and age, with lots of wit along the way.

The unconventional staging Hinton utilizes here is to essentially divide up the stage into smaller, more manageable portions if you will.  Rather than fill the entire stage with a set for each scene, he uses only part of the stage for each particular scene, allowing the rest of the large space to remain dark behind the curtain until the next scene comes up when another part of the stage is seamlessly unveiled.  It takes some getting used to, but it really works quite nicely.

The music follows the unconventional approach as well, as much of it is very contemporary and relevant to today's audiences, with the final curtain call to the music of Katie Parry.  Again, not slavishly adhering to the past, yet moving the play forward and making it relevant to a modern audience.

Lady Windermere is played by young Shaw actress Marla McLean, who has been going from strength to strength the last few seasons at the Festival.  She makes a beguiling Lady Windemere, making it easy to see why both Lord Windermere and eventually Lord Darlington would be so attracted to her.  She is simply captivating.  As Lord Windermere, Martin Happer is dapper and handsome, but I don't see a lot of magic between the two.  That is reserved for Lady Windermere and her erstwhile suitor, Lord Darlington, a young stud played with great bravado by Gray Powell.  There are sparks here, but proper appearances must prevail in Wilde's world of Victorian-era London, so Lady Windermere ultimately does not get her other man.

The crux of the problem that develops between the Windermeres is, of course, the dynamic and somewhat mysterious Mrs. Erlynne, a Mrs. only in name it seems, who receives a considerable amount of cash from Lord Windermere in order to keep up appearances.  Lady Windermere catches wind of the  transactions courtesy a third party, and that is when the Victorian you-know-what hits Lady Windermere's fan.

Yet, Mrs. Erlynne, played with great style and stage presence by Tara Rosling, seeks to save Lady Windermere from public shame by being found in Lord Darlington's quarters, tempted to steal away from her husband with him over the perceived scandal Lord Windermere finds himself in.  Rosling is about as sexy a Victorian woman as you are likely to see, and really makes the entire show take off.

The supporting cast includes Guy Bannerman as the proper Parker, the butler; Corrine Koslo as the Duchess of Berwick, and Donna Belleville as Lady Jedburgh.  Jim Mezon is superb as Lord Augustus Lorton, and Kyle Blair as Mr. Cecil Graham clearly channels his inner Oscar Wilde.

Hinton's direction is aided mightily by Teresa Przybylski's expansive sets and William Schmuck's elegant costumes.  Just as Wilde's original production was witty, sensational and totally crowd-pleasing, so to this new Shaw production directed by Peter Hinton carries on the tradition for a modern audience.

Lady Windermere's Fan continues at the Festival Theatre until October 19th and rates an exceptional 4 out of 4 stars.

July 25th, 2013.