Shaw Festival

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.

Play dates vary.

For info and brochure, 800-511-SHAW (7429) .

shawfest.com.

Note: you need a passport or enhanced Michigan license to cross the border to Canada. Note: you need a passport or enhanced Michigan license to cross the border to Canada.

Editors note: This is part two of two articles about the Stratford and Shaw theaters in Ontario.

In 1962, a small group of Americans and Canadians produced eight weekend performances of George Bernard Shaws Don Juan in Hell and Candida in a hall of the Court House in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.

From that modest beginning was born the only theater festival in the world devoted to the plays of Shaw, his contemporaries, plays set in his lifetime and, since 2009, modern plays that reflect his values.

Early in George Bernard Shaws Saint Joan, the Archbishop of Rheims defines a miracle as an event which creates faith. Even if you know how its done, he says, if it creates faith its still a miracle. Well, we know how actors prepare, but Sara Tophams performance is still a miracle.

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In 1428-30, village girl Jeanne dArcs heavenly voices directed her to repel the English from France and elevate the bullied Dauphin to the throne (as King Charles VII). Joan defied powerful churchmen and landed gentry alike, led troops into battle, secured Charless coronation and, in 1431, was executed burned at the stake for heresy, witchcraft and sorcery.

Shaws play humanizes The Maid, as Joan was known, without stinting on the harsh realities. His play is warm, affectionate and frequently amusing, qualities realized in director Tim Carrolls excellent production. Surrounded by a cast of superb character actors, Topham inhabits Joans reverence, her youthful self-confidence at 17 (or 19, shes not sure which), her warrior persona and her maturing into the threat to the establishment. Topham delivers a Joan we cheer on even as we ache to shield her from harm.

Whether or not you are familiar with the periods church/state conflicts or with the Hundred Years War, the tale is as gripping as any youll come across. Shaw, not wanting his history of Joan to end with her execution, has her former associates and antagonists acknowledge her 1920 canonization in a ghostly epilogue, which ends with Joans emotional O God that madest this beautiful earth, when will it be ready to receive Thy saints? How long, O Lord, how long? As movingly as Topham delivers the speech, Shaw might have written it for her.

Director Carrolls approach to Shaws Androcles and the Lion is as different from his Saint Joan as the plays are from one another. Both deal with religious martyrdom, but where Joan is a serious play leavened with humor, Androcles takes a more casual, comedic approach.

On the run from Roman persecution, the Christian Androcles extracts a thorn from the paw of a distressed lion, played by an audience volunteer. Later, the same lion spares his life in the arena. Carrolls version includes the tossing of rubber balls onto the stage by pre-selected audience members (four in each act) at times of their choosing. The balls signal a cast member to sing or share a personal anecdote, or some such.

Improvisation is less a talent than a skill, one in which the Androcles cast is unschooled. One young actor related (with guttural sound effects) how he had been spat upon repeatedly by a bully in high school, which, he told us, made him a better person. Hearing about it did not do the same for me.

Ah, but the saliva soak was but a blip between Saint Joan and Me and My Girl. The 1935 musicals book was updated by committee in 1984, but every note of Noel Gays original music is blessedly intact.

Sparks fly when brash Cockney Bill Snibson (Michael Therriault) turns up as the long-lost heir to the Earldom of Hereford. Bills devotion to his Lambeth sweetie Sally Smith (Kristi Frank) conflicts with the snooty Hereford clans efforts to dump Sally in favor of a more suitable consort.

That Bill will win them over and stick with Sally is a given. How Therriault and Frank negotiate the process is a delight. Both are first-rate singers and hoofers in true Music Hall tradition, with up-to-date verve and style. If Therriaults take on the title song and Franks beautifully sung Once You Lose Your Heart dont stick in your head, youre tonally afflicted. And the rousing Lambeth Walk is a bona fide show-stopper. Director Ashlie Corcoran captures the shows joy and playfulness (her aim). She, music director Paul Sportelli, and choreographer Parker Esse are all perfectly in sync.

The performance I attended was suspended for 20 minutes during the first act for technical difficulties then played out on the interior set, which remained stuck in place. (A croquet match in the library? So what.) Audience members, none of whom left, were invited to re-visit the show during its run. If I lived in the vicinity I would have taken the offer. Spending two more buoyant hours with this Bill Snibson and his girl? Who wouldnt?

The Shaw Festival also features The Madness of King George III, Dancing at Lughnasa, an adaptation of Dracula, and others through mid-October.

If you go: Shaw Festival is located in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, and play dates vary. For info and a comprehensive brochure call 800-511-SHAW (7429) or visit shawfest.com.

Note: you need a passport or enhanced Michigan license to cross the border to Canada.

See more here:
Joan of Arc, Cockney tap-dancers at Shaw Festival in Ontario - The Oakland Press