by George Bernard Shaw
Directed by Eda Holmes
At the Royal George Theatre
April 17-October 9, 2009

   Billed by at least one critic as “a Shavian Restoration comedy,” this (the final full-length play by Shaw) is really a conversation piece, lightened by elements of burlesque, vaudeville, and recitation. Bold anachronism is at the heart of it all but that doesn’t matter because it is the future that is anticipated rather than a wallowing in the past. Lytton Strachey pointed to July 15, 1662 as “the beginning of the modern world” because the Royal Society was founded, and Science came to have a secure place in Western civilization. Shaw, however, uses 1682 as his turning point and sets the first act in the “cheerful” library of Sir Isaac Newton at Cambridge. Newton is immersed in intricate calculations into the past and future, but he is interrupted by a procession of unexpected visitors, including a large man in leather (George Fox) and King Charles II traveling incognito as a Mr. Rowley. Into the scene comes Charles’ brother James, an obtuse, bigoted Catholic, and then the new Dutch painter Godfrey Kneller who believes that God made the world as an artist. The king’s three ladies (Nell Gwynn, Barbara Villiers, and Louise de Keroualle) also appear, creating assorted clashes and complications. Shaw uses them to “relieve the intellectual tension.” In the final act, Catherine of Braganza, Charles’ queen, attempts to awaken him to the fact that he is neglecting his royal duty by allowing his brother to steal the court away from him. Shaw, the amateur historian who appears to have read Trevelyan, Macaulay, Carlyle, Pepys, Belloc, Arthur Bryant, James Jeans and Sir Arthur Eddington, gives vent to his delight in intellectual wit while indulging a parade of costumed figures and recitations from Dryden’s plays. But what, oh what, is the essential point of the long debates and conversations?

   The play seems to express what C.P. Snow in the 20^th century would eventually articulate as the conflict of two cultures, art and science. But it also dramatizes and satirizes the conflict between religion/politics and life lived to the full. Newton’s craze for figures and Fox’s faith in “inner light” are in opposition to each other, but both are juxtaposed against Charles’ belief in science, his craze for women, his loathing for battles, blood, and military ambition, and his talent for life. But Charles is flawed: he uses women for amusement or for pragmatic goals, holds his spaniels in higher regard than humans, and has no sympathy for his courtiers. The king, who expresses the position that “the settled mind stagnates,” rules by his wits. He is not merely “the merry monarch” of his detractors, but someone who intends to shake up the court, science, art, and religion by his challenges to their rigidities, false assumptions, and intolerances as crystallized in the various dogmas of Fox, Newton, and James. Left with little real political power, he is delighted when Kneller upturns Newton’s philosophy of science. Charles is also a shrewd ruler who is able to keep the crown on his head and that head on his shoulders—which is no small feat, given the temper of the times.

   So, the play is not simply a trifle or a procession of talking heads in period dress. It has, of course, tons of talk, smart talk, cheeky humour, malicious sniping, and impassioned argument, and all these things make for drama but not necessarily theatre. At the Shaw Festival, director Eda Holmes states in her program note that the play reminds her of the television show “Meeting of Minds,” hosted by Steve Allen, in which all the guests were famous historical figures transported into the present for lively interviews. A good reference point, except that there was always something spurious about the transplanted historical figures. Moreover, talk, no matter how wittily engaging, is hardly good theatre. Ms. Holmes has done her best to make the show theatrical, using a circular playing area and floor with free standing doorways designed by Camellia Koo that reminds us that the universe is, indeed, curved rather than rectilinear. Her production also has been well dressed in costumes by Michael Gianfrancesco and further embellished by music from String Quartet No.1 and 2 by Michael Nyman, recorded by the Balanescu Quartet. But she breaks what little real action there is midway during a rough and tumble physical altercation between Newton and James. Perhaps this play does need two breaks instead of just one at the end of the very long first act. However, it requires a superb cast with superb voices and acting technique to make every sequence fire on all cylinders. Alas, this is not the case in this production, where the men come off a lot better than the ladies—except for Mary Haney’s Mrs. Basham and, to a lesser extent, Laurie Paton’s Catherine.

   Shaw refers to Louise de Keroualle as being baby-faced, which is anything but true of Lisa Codrington, who also lacks the character’s charisma. Nicola Correia-Damude is simply no Nell Gwynn in voice or manner, while Claire Jullien’s Duchess of Cleveland is good-looking and proficient but not very vivid. The men are better than the ladies but are not quite as good, in some cases, as they should have been. Ric Reid is correctly self-righteous as the prig, Fox, but he sometimes is too unnecessarily loud. Graeme Somerville makes Newton sound interesting, though he seems to play limited notes, while Andrew Bunker’s James plays on even fewer. Ken James Stewart has a stirring role as Kneller, which he fails to stir with flair, and Benedict Campbell, whom I have liked in most of his roles at the Shaw, is rather disappointing as Charles because he plays purely by convention and without taking any risks with his portrayal. He is all posture, strut, and rhetoric, but rather hollow in terms of inner conviction. With so many of the performers functioning as salon types rather than as warm flesh and blood characters with fascinating foibles, the play degenerates into a tiresome exercise. Shaw’s wit survives but the theatrical experience is diminished.

photos: David Cooper

pic 1 (L-R); Nicola Correia-Damude (Nell Gwynn), Lisa Codrington (Louise de Keroualle), Benedict Campbell (King Charles II), Claire Jullien (Barbara Villiers)

pic 2 (L-R): Graeme Somerville (Isaac Newton), Ric Reid (George Fox), Mary Haney (Mrs. Basham)

pic 3 (L-R): Laurie Paton (Queen Catherine of Braganza), Benedict Campbell (King Charles II)





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