by Noel Coward
Directed by Blair Williams
At the Court House Theatre
July 21-October 11, 2009

   Ways Of The Heart is the weakest trio of the Tonight At 8.30 groupings at the Shaw Festiva. Apart from The Astonished Heart—a surprisingly substantial drama that could easily have become a full-length play (it became a full-length film instead, starring Michael Redgrave)—there is little to celebrate in this triple bill that is erratically directed by Blair Williams. The Astonished Heart is a story about a married psychiatrist who falls in love with a glamorous woman who revels in her sexual allure. It is concise, taut, jagged with emotion struggling to burst through restraints, and it has the sort of close space, atmosphere, and spare dialogue that would become signatures of Harold Pinter more than a decade later. David Jansen plays Christian Faber, the psychiatrist, and he is far from ideal in the role, both as a work-consumed professional and as an adulterer who is astonished by the pulse of his own wayward heart to the point of cracking up. Claire Jullien is sexily elegant as Leonora Vail, the “smooth and shiny” temptress who draws him away from his sedately stale marriage to Barbara (Laurie Paton). The physical ambience contrived by set designer Sue LePage and lighting designer Louise Guinand is superb, with black and grey palette and a chill, gloomy feeling to the light. However, there is no window in the set, and this puts the production at a distinct dramatic disadvantage when it comes time for the fateful climax. However, Coward expertly delineates the workings of the human heart, and both Jullien and Paton create a tension that turns this piece about destructive love into a thrilling tale. Blonde Jullien has cool sophistication as a woman whose heart has been yearning for what has been lost by past misadventure, while Paton, almost cocooned in quiet distress, is superbly sensitive to the futilities of her husband and their marriage. Only Jansen fails to express the agony and depression of a man who feels himself helplessly submerged in an ill-fated situation.

   The Astonished Heart is followed by Family Album, something that Coward called “a   Victorian dainty”—by which he presumably meant a curio of outmoded sentimentality where a single surprise is elaborately and comically spun (with musical accompaniment) out of the central situation of a family bereavement. A Victorian family in mourning discovers a trunk of childhood memories, including a music box that generates flights into the past on the wings of old-fashioned songs, but the merriment, mixed with alcohol, breeds unpleasant truths about the deceased. There is little to praise in this piece, and especially not the direction or most of the performances. Judith Bowden’s costumes carry grief to extravagantly inappropriate sartorial display, and the cast (with a few competent cases and one sterling exception) flounders stylistically. Only Michael Ball as the old servant, apparently deaf Burrows, rescues what he can of the text, though his acute physical tilt is hardly necessary, and especially not with the comical musical sting to accompany his every creaky-jointed, snail’s pace appearance. Though, surprisingly, not as good as Joan Collins was at playing the spinster Lavinia in a BBC television version, Laurie Paton uses her expert vocal modulation and timing to good effect, allowing her bitterness to erupt through her mourning weeds. About the only things of memorable note are Ball’s performance, the ensemble rendition of “Hearts and Flowers,” and a merrily rocking scene change to the music and lyric of “Any Little Fish” that cancels the Victoriana and brings down a bed in fashionable Cote d’Azur with an English married couple from Ways and Means in it.

   Claire Jullien plays Stella and she knows how to do so. However, David Jansen plays her husband Toby and he doesn’t quite know how to do it. This roguish farce is too slight to be anything more than a game of amoral wits. The couple, who have been sponging off the generosity of friends once their casino gambling has left them heavily in debt, is fraught with desperation. Through the complicity of their chauffeur (who turns to burglary on the side), they devise a plot to save themselves. The chauffeur is well played by Patrick McManus (who was one of the more acceptable performers in Family Album), and this is evidently enough to charm an audience easily contented with moderate speed and some lightness.

photos; David Cooper

pic 1: Laurie Paton as Barbara Faber (The Astonished Heart)

pic 2: David Jansen (Christian Faber) and Claaire Jullien (Leonora Vail) in The Astonished Heart

pic 3 (L-R): Patrick McManus (Jasper Featherways) and Michael Ball (Burrows) in Family Album

pic 4 (L-R); Patrick McManus (Stevens), David Jansen (Toby), and Claire Jullien (Stella) in Ways and Means:




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