Blithe Spirit a delightful quirky drawing room romp

Blithe Spirit
Stratford Festival
Written by Noel Coward
Directed by Brian Bedford
Avon Theatre
Runs until October 20
Running time: 2 hours and 25 minutes (with two intervals of 15 and 10 minutes)
Tickets: 1-800-567-1600 or online www.stratfordfestival.ca 

Review by Geoff Dale

So what can you say about a play that’s been produced by countless theatre troupes around the globe for the past 72 years, won an Oscar for best cinematic special effects in 1945 and ended up as Noel Coward’s most popular work, despite the fact it only took him six days to write?

We’re guessing not very much – considering it appears yet again to be making the theatrical rounds all around the world. This latest batch includes a delightful outing at the Stratford Festival, a wonderfully amusing effort directed in grand style by the venerable Brian Bedford and starring the incomparable Seana McKenna.

So why the seven decade long interest in a drawing room work that is lightweight by any standards? Coward’s own words, when describing the play, are curious yet might explain why: “There’s no heart in the play,” he said. “If there was a heart, it would be a sad story.”

So it’s a happy but quirky play, an unlikely farce about life and love in the here-and-now and the hereafter. The focus is on a rather suave, genteel author, Charles Condomine (Ben Carlson), presumably fashioned much in the vein of Coward himself.

Thanks to the other-worldly activities of invited guest Madame Arcati (Seana McKenna), an annoying local bike-riding crackpot, author and psychic, who takes herself very seriously, poor Charles finds himself haunted by his morally loose first wife Elvira (Michelle Giroux).

That in itself presents a moral dilemma for the man, still very much married to his current and more staid spouse Ruth (Sara Topham). What it does for the storyline is provide all the laughs generated from what could be best described as a bizarre ménage à trois, of which no-one wishes to be part.

McKenna, who excels as Queen Elizabeth in the current Festival production of Mary Stuart, demonstrates here she is also a master of comedy. She can trade quips and barbs with the best of them and knows exactly how and when to milk laughs from the occasional pratfall, miscue and the oddly entrancing movements of the village’s rhythmically challenged medium.

Carlson does real justice to the role, showing all of us the author’s obvious disdain for the animalistic elements of passion, long-lasting relationships like marriage and morally questionable behavior, both from women and men. 

Proving to be quite the heel at times, he can also be quite ruthless and even cruelly hurtful in his interaction with his current wife:

“If you’re trying to compile an inventory of my sex life, I feel it only fair to warn that you’ve omitted several episodes. I shall consult my diary and give you a complete list after lunch.”

Topham is a wonderfully nagging wife while Giroux is a “spirited” addition to the less-than-happy household, getting under her husband’s skin at the most inappropriate times, leading to some of the play’s most entertaining and prickly encounters between the three.

If there’s a downside side to the levity, it may simply be that Coward appears to have little time for women, portraying Elvira as loose, Ruth as a constant nag, Arcati clearly not in full possession or her faculties and the maid Edith as a bumbler of the highest order. 

With that in mind, it’s no shocker to suggest there is never any real sense that Charles does or will ever miss either one of his two wives.

James Blendick and Wendy Thatcher add nice supporting roles as Dr. and Mrs. Bradham, guests at the initial séance, while Susie Burnett rounds out the cast as the oft-times incoherent Edith.

Blithe Spirit is a fairly gentle, humorous way to end the first week of Festival debuts, thanks to the fine work of McKenna, Carlson and company. Director Brian Bedford knows the drawing room by heart – both in and outside of this world – resulting in three out of **** stars.

This review was originally seen online at The Beat Magazine.

Photo by Don Dixon: top Michelle Giroux bottom l-r Sara Topham, Seana McKenna, Ben Carlson

Peacock and McKenna shine in Mary Stuart

Mary Stuart

Stratford Festival
Written by Friedrich Schiller
In a new version by Peter Oswald
Directed by Antoni Cimolino
Tom Patterson Theatre
Playing to September 21
Running time: two hours, 47 minutes (with one interval)
Tickets: 1-800-567-1600 or online www.stratfordfestival.ca 

Review by Geoff Dale

One key element in Friedrich Schiller’s play, skillfully updated by Peter Oswald, is that the storyline is historically correct in many details, except for one intriguing “what if” scene – the meeting of Queen Elizabeth 1 and her imprisoned cousin Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland.

While this work is clearly not the alternative history associated with present-day author Harry Turtledove (Hitler’s War) in which largely fictitious means dictate a complete reversal of the real ending, it is still the powerful and totally imagined scene between the two regal rivals that drives this play along emotional and intellectual journeys.

Equally important is that casting for Mary Stuart be without question or second thoughts. It requires top-flight performers known for flexibility of presentation, able to convey sincerity and compassion at all times through the nearly three-hour play.

Fortunately Lucy Peacock (Mary Stuart) and Seana McKenna (Elizabeth), two of the finest stage actors to be found anywhere in the theatrical world, landed the lead roles. Both exceed reasonable expectations, delivering spell-binding performances that reveal the complexities, power and even frailties of the regal cousins.

The imagined meeting of the two is simply chilling.

Peacock’s Mary Stuart is mesmerizing. As her cousin’s prisoner, she is deprived of her physical freedom but also tormented by her guilty conscience arising from her supposed role in the death of her husband Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley.

She is also at the mercy of several plots, engineered by the free-spirited Mortimer (played with delightful rage by Ian Lake) and the two-faced Earl of Leicester (portrayed with uncomfortable nastiness by Geraint Wyn Davies). Peacock is at the top of her game, delivering to the audience a conflicted soul, a misunderstood figure and clearly seen by the author as the personification of tragedy.

Yet McKenna is equally successful capturing Elizabeth’s different sides, as a strong-minded woman who is nonetheless trapped in her own metaphysical dilemma. Surrounded, seemingly on all sides, by a host of benign court sycophants and self-serving deviants, she is strangely isolated as a leader wielding ultimate power, yet still victimized by her own inner turmoil. The queen, while in control, is nevertheless a symbol of despair and at times out-of-control.

Each actress is afforded ample opportunities to demonstrate the contradictory nature of their characters and both, with the steady and masterful guidance from director Antoni Cimolino, succeed admirably.

Mary’s scenes with her handmaiden Hannah Kennedy (a gentle, touching portrait from Patricia Collins), her jailer Sir Amias Paulet (nicely underplayed with sense of honour by the always reliable James Blendick) and her confessor Melvil (Brian Tree making the necessary shift here from his usual comic persona  to drama)  are simply riveting.

Meanwhile, as she ponders her cousin’s ultimate fate in front of her royal advisors, McKenna’s stone-faced Elizabeth is electrifying. One just has to sit back and marvel as she contends with the potential consequences of executing another monarch, an unthinkable act for the times.

When she and Mary finally meet, their fictional confrontation becomes a multi-layered and glorious tour-de-force of fury-infused acting by the two leads.

Meanwhile, Brian Dennehy is a gracious, dignified and thoughtful Earl of Shrewsbury, begging his queen to act with humanity, not simply respond impulsively to the deafening screams of the crowds milling about, just outside her royal doors. He pleads with her to deal with her dilemma with caution rather than a knee-jerk reaction to unreasoned mob rage.

Blendick’s Paulet, caught perilously between two worlds, remains respectful to both queens but is nonetheless determined to honour his role as Mary’s protector as long as she lives.

Ben Carlson is an unyielding, bloodthirsty Lord Burleigh with no apparent signs of real passion or humanity– a beautifully crafted villain of the highest order. The audience is never left in doubt as to where his motivations lie, contrary to Wyn Davies’s sly vision of the slithering, ever-changing charmer Leicester.

Hats off to Peacock, McKenna, Cimolino and the full company for a ****out of 4 stars night at the theatre.

Geoff Dale is an Oxford County theatre reviewer and freelance writer/photographer. This review is also posted  in the Theatre Review section of The Beat Magazine 

Photo by: Don Dixon.  Pictured from left, Seana McKenna and Lucy Peacock.