Shaw Festival Niagara 2019 Reviews the Russian Play

Shaw Festival'due south Man and Superman takes leaps only doesn't fly

The cast ably delivers Shaw's text in marathon production, including Don Juan in Hell, but the product is missing a visual linguistic communication to match its exact depths, writes Carly Maga.

Homo and Superman With Don Juan in Hell

Written by George Bernard Shaw. Directed by Kimberley Rampersad. Until Oct. 5 at the Festival Theatre, ten Queen's Parade, Niagara-on-the-Lake. shawfest.com or 1-800-511-7429

As the final production to open up in the Shaw Festival'due south 2019 season, the half dozen-and-a-one-half-hr Man and Superman is being feted equally a "special outcome" and a marathon achievement for hardcore theatre fans up for the challenge.

This isn't the first time the festival has done the full monty — which includes Don Juan in Hell, the often omitted third act of the George Bernard Shaw play — simply the 2019 version is only the second official festival production from director Kimberley Rampersad, last seen with Shaw's O'Flaherty V.C. Going from 45 minutes to hours of text is a big leap for even the nearly seasoned managing director, and information technology shows in this gamble of a Human and Superman.

Shaw said Don Juan in Hell was like "a grand opera in the middle of a musical comedy" and, in her program notes, Rampersad calls the total product "an opera of a play."

Fittingly, especially given Rampersad's background in musical theatre and dance, the bandage of thirteen start took the phase clutching books and striking poses in time to Joseph Tritt'south plucky compositions (sound design past Fred Gabrsek) like a chorus line at the lip of the stage. The opening scene featuring David Adams as the elderly conservative Roebuck Ramsden and Kyle Blair as the lovesick, hyperromantic poet Octavius Robinson even went full opera, with the 2 men singing their lines before easing into the quick footstep of Shaw's dense text.

Enter Gray Powell, first his take on the longest role in English language theatre history as John "Jack" Tanner, a revolutionary thinker, childhood friend of Octavius and intellectual contrary of Ramsden.

The volition of the recently deceased Mr. Whitefield, a close friend of Ramsden, appoints both Tanner and Ramsden equally the guardians of his daughter Ann (Sara Topham), the object of Octavius's devotion. And here is where the main plot, or what fiddling at that place is of information technology, is laid out: Tanner fiercely rejects any zipper that would impede his personal development, specially matrimony or whatever close association with women and Ann in item.

Of course, many of Tanner's arguments are securely misogynistic, fifty-fifty when delivered so impressively past Powell, who rattles through intimidating blocks of text in the definition of a tour-de-forcefulness.

Topham plays a coy but sharp Ann and capitalizes on a vibrant chemistry with Powell, straddling the line between juvenile playfulness and tranquillity heartbreak and self-deprival. One hopes Ann volition show Tanner'southward extreme judgment of womankind's manipulative nature wrong, simply Ann is merely as wily as he suspects.

Courtney Ch'ng Lancaster as Octavius'south sister Violet, who has become pregnant by a human she refuses to proper name, is a welcome foil to Ann, even if she upholds Tanner's conventionalities of women every bit underhanded and scheming — at least she'south confident enough to rub information technology anybody'southward faces.

Every bit the group prepares for a road trip to Spain, we larn the identity of Violet'south hubby and the reason for their secrecy; Octavius reels from an unsuccessful proposal to Ann and chauffeur Straker (Sanjay Talwar) suggests to Tanner that Ann is more interested in him as a husband. In fearfulness for his future as a single man, Tanner hits the road with but Straker.

This act, the shortest, speeds past as the bandage shed their mourning blacks for springtime beige and a bouncier plot line.

When the curtain rises on Part 2, Don Juan in Hell, Tanner and Straker are caught by a ring of erudite brigands and their ringleader Mendoza (Martha Burns). The subject matter widens from relations between the sexes to global concerns like political theory and, soon, human being evolution and the purpose of life itself.

Rampersad begins with the cast of thieves dancing around a burn down pit, yelling and cheering, but the staging undermines the activeness. The overall effect to signal our imminent descent into hell, with peppery orange and red lighting, is surprisingly apartment; for the Shaw's flagship event, why did no one give Rampersad a set budget?

The hellish dreamscape, in which the characters sally as those in Mozart'due south Don Giovanni — Tanner as Don Juan, Ana every bit Dona Ana, Ramsden as the Commendatore and Mendoza every bit the Devil — contains Powell's greatest speeches, expanding on the Nietzschean concept of Superman or Übermensch; the ideal of humanity and the life force that guides us, pregnant the woman who must find the right mate and give birth to the Superman.

Maybe it was my lunch sitting heavily in my stomach, but I struggled to find the vitality in these arguments, or any entry indicate to engage with them on a personal level. I also struggled with this act's two hours, despite commendable performances from Powell, Topham, Burns and Adams. I understood why this act is and then often left out.

In the concluding stretch, Act 4, nosotros return to the main characters and resolve the love triangles. Has human nature destroyed intellectualism? As Tanner has go resigned to married doom, it seems as if the production is arguing that the natural course is heterosexual marriage and the authorisation of women in their desire to nativity a Superman, as Shaw argues.

It's a thrill to see Powell's and Topham's game of cat-and-mouse come to a head, as does Violet'due south secretive romance. Simply for this critic, the bits of Shaw'southward comedy of manners struck the most conspicuously, painting Tanner equally a fool instead of a generation's greatest thinker — every bit painful as that might be to lifelong Shavians.

A half-dozen-and-a-half-hr play is not an incredibly backbreaking feat, after all, non when the text moves as rapidly equally this capable bandage can evangelize. But this production's missing a visual language to match its exact depths, and a tighter grasp of its abstract concepts also as its interpersonal ones.

This Man and Superman makes big bounds in staging a challenging, lengthy play, but it never really flies.

Carly Maga is a Toronto-based theatre critic and a freelance contributor for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @RadioMaga

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Source: https://www.thestar.com/entertainment/stage/review/2019/08/25/shaw-festivals-man-and-superman-takes-leaps-but-doesnt-fly.html

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