by Noel Coward
Directed by Jackie Maxwell
At the Festival Theatre
April 11-October 24, 2009

   The brief encounters in the title bring back memories of the classic David Lean film starring Celia Johnson and Trevor Howard, but there is no play by Coward with that title. There is one called Still Life that was, in fact, the basis for that film, and it is one of the trio taken from Tonight At 8.30. All three are well crafted and give the illusion of a fully inhabited series of worlds. Coward’s geography, class, and tone range widely—from a small railway station café at Milford Junction (Still Life) to the fantasy island of Samolo (We Were Dancing) and a Mayfair flat (Hands Across The Sea), and the characters cut across various social classes and forms of behaviour. Still Life is a little drama of repressed and thwarted love; We Were Dancing is a comedy about adultery; and Hands Across The Sea is a comedy of manners in which martinis, misperceptions, and bon mots are in giddy supply. The most obvious motive for staging these pieces is to display Coward’s incredible talent to amuse, and the range of roles available to Jackie Maxwell’s ensemble at the Shaw Festival.

   As with any anthology, some pieces age better than others. Still Life is stronger in its comic notes than as a furtive love affair—at least in this version. As the two guilt-ridden lovers, Deborah Hay as Laura Jesson, a housewife, and Patrick Galligan as Alec Harvey, a married doctor, are overshadowed by the comic frills. Still Life sketches a series of simultaneous romances: one between a waitress (Beryl) and her cocky young wooer (Stanley); another between the middle-aged tea-shop manager (Mrs. Bagot) and the awkwardly persistent station master (Albert); and the central sentimental one between Laura and Alec who first meet when he gallantly removes a piece of grit from her eye. The tones and moods of the romances vary. The young lovers are ardent and immature; Mrs. Bagot and Albert Godby play out their romance with a mixture of awkward shyness and anxiety; and Laura and Alec remain guilt-ridden to the end. 

   In some ways, the two smaller romances are too interesting as comic relief to be complements of the main one, and they are better acted, if only because there is not enough chemistry between Deborah Hay and Patrick Galligan and because director Jackie Maxwell has not managed to sustain a sense of gloomy frustration. Moreover, Gray Powell’s cheeky Stanley and Krista Colosimo’s eager Beryl do not have to deal with a grey palette, just as Thom Marriott and Corrine Koslo work with a few more colours and are a lovely contrast in character and comic technique.

   Maxwell segues beautifully from this piece to the exotic We Were Dancing, a colourful comedy of adultery, set on a fictional South Seas Island. As the railway station shop disappears, Kevin Lamotte creates a beautiful starlit blue sky under which dance Louise (Hay) and Karl (Galligan) at the island country club. This romance is adulterous because Louise is married to Hubert (Marriott) and her capriciousness disturbs her sister-in-law Clara (Goldie Semple). We Were Dancing is a slight comic romance that is enriched by music and the director’s romantic or playful touches, including a flat-out Bollywood number, replete with deliberately outrageous choreography (by Valerie Moore). Excellent performances all round—but especially by Michael Ball as the cuckolded, dim Major, and exquisite Goldie Semple as Clara Bethel.

   Maxwell allows her directorial hand a little too much freedom in Hands Across The Sea, almost ruining this comedy by an idiosyncratic set design by William Schmuck who evidently let his island fantasy in We Were Dancing wander into Coward’s idea of Mayfair high society. What with zeppelins floating in and blotting out much of the sky outside the Gilpin flat in London, 1935, it is almost as if director and designer had wanted to add their own comic-strip touch to pre-wartime London.  All the fuss and bother become a visual distraction, though given the untidiness of the Gilpin flat—with Lady Maureen’s shoes scattered about—perhaps the balloons allow the spectator’s eye some relief from the soles of comedy. Otherwise, this drawing-room comedy succeeds in its own eccentric way. Spun from a caricature of Lord and Lady Mountbatten, this piece is about Lady Maureen Gilpin, a smart, attractive woman who insists that her husband, Commander Peter Gilpin, help entertain unexpected visitors. Trouble is that when the guests arrive, they are all but forgotten in the course of antic activity—rather like the houseguests in Hay Fever. When Lady Maureen does focus on the couple on holiday from their rubber plantation in Malaya, it becomes achingly clear that she has them mixed up with someone else. This is the one piece of the three on the bill that mirrors the flippancy and snobbery of English society. Every player hits the right comic target in this production, especially Goldie Semple as Clare Wedderburn and the duo of Corrine Koslo and Thom Marriott as the colonial English couple. Where Koslo shows her comic genius by being simultaneously overawed by Mayfair society and eager to have a place in it, Marriott is funny by being glumly passive and not a little bored. Also good are Deborah Hay as the well-intentioned but hectically disorganized Lady Maureen, and Patrick Galligan as her naval commander husband.

   Hands Across The Sea completes a triple bill in which all the major characters of all three plays live outside the rules and conventions of decorous English society, and, as such, can be taken as clever bits of social comment by an imperishable master of comedy.

photos David Cooper

pic 1: Patrick Galligan and Deborah Hay in "Still Life"

pic 2: Patrick Galligan and Deborah Hay in "We Were Dancing"

pic 3: Goldie Semple and Corrine Koslo in "Hands Across The Sea"

pic 4: Deborah Hay, Patrick Galligan, and Thom Marriott in "Hands Across The Sea"






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