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Shaw survives season of suffering
Toronto Star-
5/
1/
2004
NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKEThe
theatre gods had a rough welcome waiting in the wings for Jackie
Maxwell last summer in what was her first season as artistic director
of the Shaw Festival.Plagues of biblical proportions rained down
on Niagara-on-the-Lake during 2003 the SARS outbreaks, the war with
Iraq, the blackout.Tourists stayed away in droves and the end
result was a deficit of $3 million, of which $2.5 million was
attributable to falling attendances."I have to shore up the
ditches here," admits Maxwell, sitting in her new office in the
festival's nearly completed rehearsal hall complex beside the Festival
Theatre."But I have to do it without backtracking artistically on what
I want to do." The 2004 season at Niagara-on-the-Lake opens on Thursday
with Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, directed by Maxwell and
starring Tara Rosling as Eliza Doolittle and Jim Mezon as Henry
Higgins. At
first blush, the playbill may suggest a more populist bent. Of the 12
productions, seven are comedies, and two more Rodgers and Hart's
masterpiece Pal Joey and Adam Guettel's Floyd Collins
are musicals.But
true to her word, there is no backtracking on Maxwell's commitment to
Canadian theatre. Two of the productions highlight Canadian drama
George F. Walker's Nothing Sacred, written in 1988, and John
Murrell's Waiting For The Parade which dates back to1977.Both
have pedigree and a history of successful productions.Nevertheless,
Walker, a prolific and highly respected Toronto playwright who has been
writing since 1972, has never had a play produced by either of Canada's
two major summer festivals. Maxwell has now corrected this surprising
oversight. And what's more, Nothing Sacred will be staged at
the mainstage Festival Theatre.That continues the message spelled out
last season, when a tough, newish Canadian play, Michel Marc Bouchard's
The Coronation Voyage, shared the Festival Theatre for much of
the summer with Toronto actor/playwright Susan Coyne's adaptation of
Chekhov's Three Sisters. It was a bold move that unravelled in
light of events.Maxwell
realizes now that two high-risk works on the Festival stage was
probably one too many. "The Festival Theatre is very vulnerable," she
admits.Coronation Voyage was a gritty, unsettling play
but Maxwell insists that, judging by anecdotal evidence, the reaction
from the festival's core audience was "overtly positive.""I was
quite prepared to armour myself and receive a lot of brickbats but that
wasn't the case at all. People said they wanted to hear their
(Canadian) voice on that stage. So I can take heart here. The people
who come to our shows are reacting well." She believes the
challenge is a different one: to spread the word to Toronto in
particular. "Do the people that we want to know about these shows
actually know they are happening?"Actor Goldie Semple, starting
her 12th season with the festival, says some casts were disappointed
about last season, with all its mishaps. "Jackie wants Canadian plays
and we are all for it, so you have to be prepared to bite the bullet on
that one until it settles itself in."Everyone is positive about the
calibre of productions at the festival, Semple says, and opening night
of The Coronation Voyage was genuinely exciting. "There
was a sense of Canadians applauding the fact that we had this lovely
production of an interesting play on the main stage. It was a very
brave and gorgeous gesture."For her part, Maxwell is determined
to maintain a contemporary presence at the Festival Theatre, which is
why George Walker has finally made it to the Shaw. Meanwhile, comedy
reigns supreme at that theatre. Beyond Pygmalion, there's the
George Abbott/John Cecil Holm farce Three Men On A Horse and
Shaw's philosophical comedy Man And Superman."Both the Shaws
are plays I want to see performed and we haven't done for ages. And
both sell," says Maxwell.Laughing all the way to the bank? Well, maybe.
"There is no doubt that I feel pressure for it to work," she says wryly.The
program at the Royal George Theatre is audience-friendly too, with the
classic Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey, Oscar Wilde's
enduring comedy The Importance Of Being Earnest and Waiting
For The Parade there for the summer, joined for a month or so by
the lunchtime one-act Harlequinade.The Court House Theatre has
one comedy Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness! but the other
offerings there are made of sterner stuff. Rutherford And Son
by Githa Sowerby is about a tyrannical father and continues the Shaw
tradition of theatrical archeology. Floyd Collins is
an unusual and thoughtful musical written in 1994 by Adam Guettel, with
book by Tina Landau, and John Millington Synge's one-act play The
Tinker's Wedding reflects Maxwell's interest in Irish drama.Maxwell
has also taken the unusual step of dividing the traditional opening
week into two. Pygmalion, Earnest and Three Men On A Horse
debut next week, while Pal Joey and Ah, Wilderness! open
at the end of the month.She
cites a couple of reasons for this. Rehearsals and previews are
happening earlier and one show had 23 previews last year before finally
opening. "I find the full week brutal and it is hard on the last couple
of shows. Why not open them when they are ready?"And there is lost
revenue to consider. Long previews mean shows are being sold cheap, at
preview prices.Maxwell
admits she was upset by the criticism over last year's deficit: "I was
hurt by some of the analysis because I felt some of it was unjust."
When
she put out 60 offers to various actors for the 2004 season, 58 were
accepted within 10 days, an indication that the acting company is
excited."I am used to it as a director, with good reviews and
bad reviews .... But (as artistic director), it happened over and over
again. I have got to develop a thicker skin." |
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