By Grant Golden:
THE BASICS: Playwright John Murrell’s commissioned adaptation of Bernard Shaw’s GENEVA plays in repertory at the Courthouse Theatre in Niagara on the Lake through October 12th. Blair Williams has directed this newest version of Shaw’s 1938 political burlesque. The show runs two hours and twenty minutes, with its single intermission.
THUMBNAIL SKETCH: The action takes place in Geneva, Switzerland 1938. Belle (formerly Liberty Bell) Browning, who serves as secretary for the League of Nations’ woebegone Office of International Cooperation, fields complaints and requests from a wide variety of people—a German Jew, a Canadian politico, a Spanish politician’s wife, a British bishop and a Russian commissar—on one unusually busy May morning. She redirects them all to the International Court at the Hague, where the Senior Judge has been plotting to get the world’s top dictators—Hitler, Mussolini and Franco—to speak their minds to the world. The resultant “trial” is like something out of Marx—Groucho , Harpo and Chico, not Karl!
THE PLAY, THE PLAYERS AND THE PRODUCTION: If you have never even heard of Shaw’s GENEVA, don’t worry. I hadn’t either. This is one of GBS’s least liked and least performed plays. It incorporates some of his antipathy to the democratic process, and some of his admiration for “supermen” who consolidate power and rule on the basis of personal magnetism. That said, over GENEVA’s long and troubled gestation, Shaw soured on both Mussolini and Hitler. The play was revised again and again, to keep it in line with events of the day, and the playwright’s own evolving views. Adaptor Murrell, an expatriate American, has changed Englishwoman Begonia Brown into Belle Browning—an American Ditz abroad. It’s a good humored caricature, one with which we are all pretty familiar. I doubt that many Americans will be offended, particularly in a let’s-make-fun-of-many-nations show such as this. While loud and stiff in the awful first scene, actress Diana Donnelly grows on you as Belle. I wish I could say the same for Andrew Bunker as Darcy Middleman, the Canadian Conservative. He bellows out his lines at the top of his voice, for reasons unknown. Patrick Galligan is the picture of suave gentility as the British Foreign Secretary. And you’ve got to love Claire Jullien’s Dona Dolores Ochoa, crusading for her own execution in the name of Spanish honor! She comes pretty close to stealing the show! Moya O’Connell’s Russian Commissar is Ninotchka, but without the great Garbo’s flair. Charlie Gallant plays the disenfranchised German Jew, Joseph Rubinstein, very stiffly; he does not elicit audience sympathy, and Shaw, perhaps uncomfortable with the whole “Jewish question”, gives the character decidedly short shrift. Jeff Meadows, as the urbane Secretary to the League of Nations, has the honor of being the author’s mouthpiece, and most admirably savages all of the many crazy nationals. Neil Barclay is clearly having a ball, throwing his very considerable weight around as Il Duce. Ric Reid makes an excellent comic Hitler, and the ever-so-versatile Lorne Kennedy also scores points, as the hotheaded Generalisimo Franco.
PEACE gets off to a very bad start, with the second act (these are scenes, really) not that much better than the first. With the third act, transposed to a public garden, things brighten up considerably, and the after-intermission act four, featuring Hitler, Mussolini and Franco, is both funny and memorable. Despite its unevenness, its woeful lack of structure, Shaw delivers a powerful message in GENEVA/PEACE, as valid today as it was 70 odd years ago: If you are a patriot–in particular a flag-waving, breast-beating, in-your-face patriot–then, no matter where you come from, or who you sympathize with, you are part of the problem! Thank you, Shaw Festival, for bringing us this problematic but still timely piece!
Production values at the Shaw are invariably high. Victoria Wallace’s costumes are a particular stand-out here.
ONE BUFFALO: This means trouble. A dreadful play, a highly flawed production, or both. Unless there is some really compelling reason for you to attend (i.e. you are the parent of someone who is in it), give this show a wide berth.
TWO BUFFALOS: Passable, but no great shakes. Either the production is pretty far off base, or the play itself is problematic. Unless you are the sort of person who’s happy just going to the theater, you might look around for something else.
THREE BUFFALOS: I still have my issues, but this is a pretty darn good night at the theater. If you don’t go in with huge expectations, you will probably be pleased.
FOUR BUFFALOS: Both the production and the play are of high caliber. If the genre/content are up your alley, I would make a real effort to attend.
FIVE BUFFALOS: Truly superb–a rare rating. Comedies that leave you weak with laughter, dramas that really touch the heart. Provided that this is the kind of show you like, you’d be a fool to miss it!