The transition to new artistic leadership at the Shaw Festival has been handled with subtlety and deft seamlessness. Many of the names from past seasons continue to headline all areas of production, from actors to designers to directors to administrators. And the lack of house cleaning as the strident reminder that Jackie Maxwell is now sitting where Christopher Newton sat for so long before her goes a long. long way in explaining why this season feels so much like seasons past. Yet there are changes of a significant nature, accentuating the positive, and they are evident in the programming of the season itself.
The Coronation Voyage, a Canadian play first produced in French in 1995 and then in English in 2000, marks a welcome return of a Canadian play on the Festival Stage. The festival's expanded mandate, which now permits plays set during Shaw's lifetime along with those written during the same period, accounts for the shift. But it is probably more accurate to say that Maxwell's personal taste and first-hand experience with Canadian repertoire and especially with contemporary playwrights, speaks to the most public face of a new direction at the Shaw.
The performance I attended last week was hardly a capacity house, and the great majority of those present were advanced seniors, but the rapt attention and energized half-time chatter made it clear that Bouchard's play touched a nerve that has been left too long untapped. Intermission conversations may often focus on dinner plans, shopping hints and recommendations of local sights to explore. But that was not even close to what I overheard between the acts. People were actively exchanging their favourite moments of the first half and their explanations for characters' responses to miserably unhappy circumstances. I didn't hear anything unrelated to what had happened in the pervious 75 minutes. The post-performance analysis, as we strolled up the aisles and out the main entrance, was spent in similar pursuit of the play and not of the play as a respite between wineries, tea shops and fruit stands.
To the play itself.
Bouchard sets his play aboard an ocean liner headed to England for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Among the passengers are a diplomat; a Mafioso who, with his two sons, intends to start a new life using false passports with invented identities; a Federal cabinet minister, his wife and their daughter; and three young women named Elizabeth who, having won a contest, are provided first-class accommodation and access to this assortment of uncommon Canadians. Joining them is a writer who has been engaged by the Mafioso to create his biography more as tribute than truth. The playwright juggles the various characters' lives and interactions throughout, a floating Grand Hotel without all the glamour of that episodic melodrama, and moving well past melodrama as he examines several themes.
Elizabeth's coronation, promoted as a rallying cry for patriotic fervour, is contrasted with the early stages of questionable loyalties between the English and French in colonial Canada. The minister's wife is obsessed by the first attack on Dieppe, when one of her sons was killed and the other was permanently disabled, and the government's decision to focus only on the victory that came two years later. The diplomat strikes a deal with the Mafioso that tests the depths of corruption to which desperate people can descend. And the biographer, who serves as a hollow voice of cynicism throughout, reinforces the fact that history is always written from a personal perspective and treads a tenuous line between various shades of truth. The Coronation Voyage is a play rich in provocative arguments.
The physical production is elegantly designed by Ken MacDonald(set) and William Schmuck(costumes) and Maxwell's direction provides clarity of text and character. The creative team are all in the same world and they contribute as eagerly as the acting company.
Onstage, there are inconsistencies that occasionally distract. Some actors dispense with dialect altogether while others affect a suggestion of French-Canadians speaking in English without particular purpose. The text employs naturalism, poetic realism and broad farce and some of the actors master the shifts of tone with ease while others remain less fully developed. Donna Belleville, as the politician's wife, hurls herself at the anguish that all but drowns her character. Whether she is tossing off one of Bouchard's brittle put-downs or lashing out at her husband and his dedication to maintaining emotional balance at the cost of his soul, Belleville absolutely inhabits the woman's spirit. By contrast, Dylan Trowbridge, playing the Mafioso's older son, works too hard at anger and sacrifices credibility in the process. Peter Krantz, though probably too young as the diplomat, underplays his role to chilling effect.
The scene in which the characters rehearse the coronation shifts to farce and is the least satisfying scene of the evening with rather ham-fisted acting replacing what elsewhere has been subtle or commanding. How do you explain three young women in evening gowns sitting down on the floor when there are plenty of deck chairs just a few feet away? Why does the overbearing assistant, played by Glynis Ranney, turn into a cartoon character when earlier she was merely officious? Why is the singing of a national anthem rendered as a travesty when earlier political comments were meant to be taken quite seriously?
The play's resolutions also fail to register as powerfully as the events suggest they should. The final scene between the politician (a quietly compelling David Schurmann) and his wife rings false in the writing and the play's closing moments between the Mafioso and his sons also aims for more than the playwright can deliver. Perhaps this is due to the fact that Bouchard mixes too many styles with too little purpose and perhaps the debates are more intriguing than the characters are compelling. However, there is no doubt that the play works wonders for its audience and that the choice of the play is already working wonders for the future of the Shaw Festival.
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