Welcome to SCENE CHANGES - Covering the best of the Toronto Entertainment Scene! Updated Weekly! Previews and Reviews by Jeniva Berger

The Shaw Festival 2010 Season
Artistic Director: Jackie Maxwell
Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario Canada

April 1 to October 31, 2010

Plays about the beginning of the modern world
by George Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries

An ideal Husband The Women The Doctor's Dilemma
The Cherry Orchard John Bull's Other Island Age of Arousal Harvey One Touch of Venus Half an Hour
Serious Money

For theatre tickets and full season brochures, please phone the Shaw Festival box office at 1-800-511-7429. Brochures and tickets may also be ordered through the website at www.shawfest.com.

"London is full of women who trust their husbands; one can always recognise them because they look so thoroughly happy," said Oscar Wilde, whose 1894 play, An Ideal Husband, offered his inimitable view of how deceptive happiness can be.

There are two kinds of women in An Ideal Husband: the first, Lady Gertrude Chiltern, the "highly principled" and much admired wife of a well known and highly respected politician, Sir Robert Chiltern; the second is the amoral Mrs. Chevely (Moya O'Connell) who could care less about what anyone thinks of her, which automatically makes her far more interesting than Lady Chiltern.

Lady Gertrude Chiltern (Catherine McGregor) and her husband Robert (Patrick Galligan), a rising star in the British government, look like the ideal couple, living out the perfect life in their fashionable home in Grosvenor Square. Everything around them reflects a subdued elegance. There are no hints of the overstuffed flowery remnants of Victoriana. Designer Judith Bowden's set is sleek and shiny and spacious. The upper floor of the Chiltern home which crowns a significant staircase, has no signs of life beyond its bannister. There is good sense here and good taste, but lacking color, even passion, a house that is a perfect showcase for its pristine inhabitants.

Into the lives of the Chilterns, comes the glamorous, wealthy, clever and conniving Mrs. Chevely who is a old school acquaintance of Catherine, and has spent her years abroad marrying for money, and one suspects, doing something other than decorating her house with the spoils. But her behavior this night is correct until she corners Robert Chiltern at a political house party to which she hasn't been invited and tries to bribe him to speak in favor of an Argentine Canal project in which she's invested.

Robert is aghast at her suggestion until she reminds him that when he was young and a secretary to a cabinet minister, he wrote a letter advising a stock speculator to buy shares in the Suez Canal before the government announced it publicly. In exchange for his complicity in promoting the unpopular Argentine Canal, reportedly corrupt, she will give him the letter.

Wilde wasted no time in introducing two of the most interesting characters in the play and director Jackie Maxwell has given each of them a wide birth to explore all their possibilities. The pernicious Mrs. Chevely with Moya O'Connell as the cagey fortune hunter, has made an early entrance into the lives of the stuffy Chilterns who are soon to be deflated, and not far behind is the sunny, sardonic Lord Goring, Robert Chiltern's closest friend, and conterpart to that other unforgettable dandy, Jack Worthing, found in Wilde's greatest play, The Importance of Being Earnest. Stephen Sutcliffe as Goring, deceptively shallow and incorrigibly frank, is worthy of all the humorous one-liners Wilde lavished on the character.

There is still the matter of Lady Chiltern forgiving her husband for not living up to her lofty ideals of him and here, Catherine McGregor is every inch the chilly patrician, so much so you could almost applaud her fall from grace when a beseeching letter she has written to Lord Goring to help her with her huband's problem, falls into Mrs. Cheveley's hands, who re-interprets it to her own advantage and sends it to Lord Chiltern.

All of the the real intrigue takes place in Act Three in Lord Goring's library with the wrong woman hiding in the smoking room overhearing a private conversation, and the right one finally being vindicated. It's a scene that is pure melodrama and fits right in with the Victorian potboilers of the day. All's well that ends well with conjugal harmony being the ultimate goal. And so it is.

Both Lord and Lady Chiltern recognize that human frailties are part and parcel of the marital state and forgiveness is divine, or at least the intelligent thing to do - and their balance is restored with Robert Chiltern in the running for a cabinet seat, Lord Goring wins his bride, the outspoken, precocious Mabel Chiltern, Robert's sister, played to a turn by Marla McLean, while Lord Goring's 's stuffy father Lord Caversham (Lorne Kennedy) is only happy that his unemployed son has found some credibility as a husband to be.

Wilde captured all the conventions of the day but laced them with irony and parody. It's Mabel Chiltern who has the last word on the precarious nature of idealizing your mate. "An ideal husband!" she exclaims. "Oh, I don't think I should like that. It sounds like something in the next world." The Shaw production keeps a happy balance between it all, with wit and style, and very much appealing to this world. An Ideal Husband plays until Oct. 29 at the Festival Theatre.
Photo: by David Cooper. Parick Galligan and Moya O'Connell in An Ideal Husband.
(Reviewed by Jeniva Berger)

More than 7 years and a World War separated the Kurt Weill musical One Touch of Venus and Claire Booth Luce's comedy The Women, yet both shared similarities in their New York sensibilities while looking at women existing in a man's world.

Photo: by Emily Cooper. L to R: Jenny Young, Jenny L Wright, Kelli Fox, Deborah Hay.

The Women, written in 1936, was Booth's expansive treatment of gossip overhead in a nightclub powder room. An 19-member all-female cast was somewhat of a novelty for Broadway audiences though men were very much part of the privileged, upper class women's world that Booth knew quite well, even unseen, and were an integral part of The Women.

The play begins with a card party in Mary Haines comfortable living room, but soon degenerates into common gossip. Mary Haines is the most grudgingly admired woman in the group. She's happy, loves her husband and her kids, is down to earth, and has married well. Jenny Young's Mary is sincere, generous and trusting and therefore oblivious to what the others have guessed in a heartbeat: that her husband is having an affair with another woman.

Mary's coterie of well-heeled 'friends' are a wildly diverse lot from the catty Sylvia Fowler (Deborah Hay) to the perennially pregnant Peggy Day (Beryl Bain) who would gladly sell one of her kids, but outside of the matter-of-fact Nancy Blake (Kelli Fox), by far the most likeable one of the group, most are so far beneath the untouchable Mary that it's not hard to guess that the troublemakers are jumping at the chance to hurtle Mary into the divorce courts. The descent comes rather quickly when Mary visits a manicurist suggested by Sylvia to try out the newest shade of polish, "Jungle Red". The manicurist ready and willing to pass on all the gossip, stuns Mary with her revelation about a certain Stephen Haines who is having an affair with Crystal Allen.

Despite Mary's attempt to let Stephen's affair take its course - at the advice of her even tempered mother (Sharry Flett) whom one suspects has gone through the same trials and tribulations and is all the wiser - or inured - because of it, and even after a cooling off two-month holiday in Bermuda, when Mary returns and meets the other woman in an exclusive Fifth Avenue clothing shop where Crystal is honing her jungle red nails to snare Stephen permanently, her marriage ends in bitterness.

In between the divorce settlement and the scandalous behavior of Mary's dubious friends with their callousness and roundelay of extra-marital affairs, Mary metamorphoses from a conservative house frau into a tigress, ready to sharpen her nails and prepare for battle to win back her husband. One wonders whether, with a little more experience, Mary will be much better than the pampered hard-edged women in her social circle.

The Women in the Shaw production take us back to America in the mid 1930's when the country had barely emerged from the effects of The Great Depression. You'd hardly know it even existed in The Women's rarified atmosphere. A whole new generation of nouveau riche with their ordinary and often humble backgrounds were more than ready to enjoy their new money and newly discovered decadence, though it it was still a man's world for most women. The Women with its New York Park Avenue ambience was an anomaly in the social and living standards of the average women in the country. Still, Luce's play brought heightened enjoyment to audiences in the 1930's who savored The Women's sharp wit, cat fighting and self-indulgent lifestyles.

Director Alisa Palmer has seen to it that The Women is a classy show, certainly in the visual sense. One can't do much with the bitchy women of the story though the conservative Mary Haines played elegantly by Jenny Young is an exception, unlike the stereotype Hollywood blonde bombshell of Moya O'Connell's vacuous Crystal Allen. William Schmuck's stage design which even features a luxurious bubble bath in one scene, is often lush and colorful (though the first scene needs to bring that card table of women closer to the audience for better audibility), and the costuming captures the 1930's taste for mutton sleeves, ruffles and plunging backless evening gowns which film designers like Adrian popularized.

The Shaw Festival's first production of The Women took place in 1985 and as I recall was a much simpler affair than the current one at the Festival Theatre. Bigger isn't always better, but in this case extravagance wins out in the the argument between whether the show is a satire or a feminist indictment. It's irrelevant. It's simply entertainment. The Women plays at the Festival Theatre until Oct. 9.

With One Touch of Venus, composer Kurt Weill entered into very different territory than his European based works like The Threepenny Opera written in 1928 with Bertold Brecht. He had been in America since 1935 after fleeing his native Germany, studying the styles of American music and writing for stage and film when he combined with lyricist Ogden Nash and book writer S.J. Perleman to adapt a novella called The Tinted Venus.

One Touch of Venus, which loosely spoofed the Pygmalion myth, opened on Broadway in 1943 directed by Elia Kazan, choreographed by none other than Agnes de Mille, and starring Mary Martin. It ran for a very healthy 567 performances establishing Weill as a significant presence on the American musical theatre scene.

Musical theatre buffs shouldn't’t miss out on the rarely produced One Touch of Venus that has settled in at the Shaw Festival’s Royal George Theatre until Oct. 10. Despite some stereotypical characters and a rather silly story line about an art dealer who imports a valuable statue of Venus de Milo which comes to life, One Touch of Venus is Kurt Weill at his most American and most tuneful. Musical numbers written for shows like One Touch of Venus ("Speak Low") and Knickerbocker Holiday (“September Song”) are among the loveliest, most melancholy love songs in the pop canon.

On the more contemporary side, One Touch of Venus’s contribution was that it was unusually risqué for the period with the joy of free sex earning more than passing references. When wealthy modern art-dealer Whitelaw Savory (Mark Uhre) places his newly delivered, precious statue of the Venus de Milo in an unlikely park setting, he leaves it alone with Rodney (Kyle Blair), his barber who slips a ring on her finger that should be given have been given to his fiancée, the husband hungry Gloria. Gloria, who is bossy, brass and rich, a second banana comedian whom you’d like to mash, knows that she has to get a husband and the only way to get him is to keep him corralled like a show horse. The only positive thing about the character is that Julie Martell as Gloria finally gets to show her mettle as a well rounded actress who can do both comedy and drama.

When the statue comes alive after Rodney puts the ring on her finger, so does the story. It’s not a very believable transformation. With a flash of lightning and some awkward mechanical moves onstage, the statue of the 100 BC Venus (who by the way has both her arms) turns around on its pedestal in the park and becomes a real live girl. Robin Evan Willis is the epitome of that with her Technicolor beauty, 1940’s long blonde wavy hair and curvaceous pin-up girl figure, but she doesn’t look a bit like the statue and her attitude is very modern with an almost lascivious penchant for teaching shy guys like Rodney the wonders of love making and letting yourself go. Forget love as being the sound of violins she tells him, It’s “the triumphant twang of a bedspring.” Poor Rodney, he so naïve in these pre-Viagra days that he doesn’t know what to make of his teeth sweating.

But when Venus leaves the pedestal empty in pursuit of her reluctant hero who gave her life again, the angry Whitelaw is so sure that Rodney has stolen the statue that he enlists his gangster goons to track down the pair. Venus, who can't seem to get Rodney to pay the right kind of attention to her, consoles herself with lamenting how love has changed in 3000 years with a charming rendition of “I’m a Stranger Here Myself.”

In good burlesque fashion, the strident Gloria, her equally obstreperous mother, Whitelaw, and the gangsters engage in a kind of Charlie Chaplin movie roundelay where the girl is tied up, Rodney is knocked out and Venus makes Gloria disappear. Unfortunately, she will come back, but since Rodney has been accused of murdering her, it gives the story a good Broadway upbeat ending when Gloria reappears, courtesy of Venus, with her sights set elsewhere, and Venus’ metamorphoses into the kind of woman that Rodney needs – someone from suburban Ozone Heights who will make a proper stay at home wife. Kyle Blair is very right as the nerdish but appealing Rodney, and you can’t help but feel this was a marriage made in heaven – or Olympus.

For the most part it’s best not to pay too much attention to the plot. Once Venus sings the memorable "Speak Low," Rodney is sunk and nothing much else matters. One Touch of Venus is classic Broadway musical comedy more in the vein of the 1930's dizzy musicals of Cole Porter and Irving Berlin that made people feel better in the waning years of the Great Depression. In 1943, America was knee deep in World War II and One Touch of Venus was a bright nonsensical story with good music that was a solid hit alongside the more sentimental, sweeping Oklahoma! which opened in the same year. Weill, along with his co-writers had captured a part of the Broadway market with the show. It also made Mary Martin a star.

Well directed by Eda Holmes with good choreography by Michael Lichtefeld and colorful sets by Camellia Koo that are changed in a New York minute, there are some stand-outs in the musical comedy division, one of them the versatile Deborah Hay as Whitelaw’s smart and tart assistant, and Mark Uhre's rousing, deliciously dark Dr. Crippin, sung by Savory and chorus and sandwiched in between the love songs. You can almost hear Sweeney Todd and The Black Rider waiting in the wings. But in 1943, Once Touch of Venus was a touch of magic for war weary audiences. It plays in repertoire at the Royal George Theatre until Oct. 10.
(Reviewed by Jeniva Berger)

The venerable lunchtime show has opened at the Shaw Festival’s Royal George Theatre. J.M. Barrie, better known as the author of Peter Pan, has penned a thirty-minute play that shows how a woman has just half-an-hour to get herself out of a terrible fix. The woman is played beautifully by Diana Donnelly, who decides to get out of her loveless marriage to a successful businessman, powerfully played by Peter Krantz.

How she manages to salvage what turns into a bad situation is compelling and thoroughly entertaining. Director Gina Wilkinson adds some clever moments to this production which starts at 11:30, and not the noon start that one might expect.

The design is particularly good, and Festival veteran Michael Ball adds some good business throughout the production. Peter Millard plays a doctor who is introduced to the lead players at two different times and uses some clever reaction to avoid a complete mess from happening at the dinner party that is being run on the same day that the mistress of the household decides to leave forever. Millard is one of those players who has spent many seasons at Niagara-on-the-Lake and occasionally gets a part that shows his talents to best advantage.

Rounding out the company is the solid character work of Norman Brown and Laurie Paton, the Reddings, who are dinner guests and also husband and wife in real life. The show is a great way to spend 35 minutes at the Festival and because of its length is less costly that other shows, but still gives high quality performance from some of the Shaw Festival’s best company members. Half an Hour plays in repertoire at the Royal George Theatre until Oct. 9.
Photo: by Emily Cooper. Diana Donnelly and Gord Rand in Half an Hour.
(Reviewed by Ric Wellwood, a London Ontario based freelance theatre critic.)

Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard has always been served best by simplicity. Years ago, a production at Peter Brooks' Theatre Bouffes du Nords in Paris was an example of how minimal a production can be and still keep the audience captivated. With nothing but a rug, a few chairs and the sound of cherry trees being chopped down in the distance, the show ended with the slamming of the theatre doors as the actors playing members of the Ranyevskaya household left the once grand, now deserted estate one by one. And that was that.
Photo: by David Cooper. L to R: Robin Evan Willis, Laurie Paton, Severn Thompson, Jim Mezon

In The Shaw Festival's current production of Tom Murphy's version of The Cherry Orchard director Jason Byrne has taken a similar approach in letting the actors simply carry the show. There is not even a sound of cherry trees being chopped in the distance, in fact little seems to be happening outside the confines of the estate despite the fact that Russia is hurtling into a new era, and Peter Hartwell's minimal stage design with Kevin Lamotte's most non-intrusive lighting, only augment the stolid atmosphere that begins the play in near darkness as dawn very slowly filters into a long ago children's nursery. The servants nervously await the arrival of Madame Ranyevskaya who has come back from Paris with her daughter Anya, to help salvage her beloved cherry orchard.

There is forced gaiety. Madame Ranyevskaya played by Laurie Paton, who is celebrating her 14th season with the Shaw Festival and has turned into one of its most impressive actors, waffles between the patriot who loves and misses her country - or rather her insouciant youth there - and her escape from the unhappy memories when her married life was cut short after the death of her husband and her young son. Fleeing to Paris where what little money she has is spent frivolously with a lover who is using her, she has come back to try and help he brother Leonid Gayev save the cherry orchard. It will soon become apparent that neither one knows how to do it, for Gayev, played by Jim Mezon, has no business sense nor any knowledge of anything happening in the world outside the cherry orchard. He salutation to an old book case is so ponderous it's both humorous and pathetic.

The one person who does have a plan is a former serf at the estate, the now wealthy if boorish Lopakhin, whose keen business sense has led him to believe that there is money to be made if the cherry orchard is cut down and the land parceled and turned into vacationers cottages. Neither Gayev or his sister will even consider it hoping that a wealthy aunt will give them enough money to keep the cherry orchard, but when that falls short, Lopakhin purchases it at the auction.

His ownership of the cherry orchard is more than a a victory, it's a triumph. The former peasant who slaved for his employers is now equal to them, and Benedict Campbell, remarkable as a manic, drunken Lopakhin, is a man caught between delirium and sanity, disbelief and reality. "If only my father and grandfather could rise from their graves and see everything that's happened. How their Yermolai, their half-beaten, half-literate Yermolai that used to run about in bare feet....how he's bought this estate, the most beautiful place on God's earth. I've bought the very estate where my father and grandfather were serfs, where they weren't even admitted to the kitchen.!".

Chekhov's great and sometimes wild assortment of characters mainly swirl around Madame Ranyevskaya in this fertile corner of Russia, as courtiers who have been waiting for the arrival of royalty. Despite adapter Tom Murphy's attempt to correlate the circumstances of the Russian estate aristocracy who had never been brought up to be practical, with the once wealthy absentee landowners of decaying" Irish estates at the turn of the century who were attached to their properties but unable to run them, The Cherry Orchard to North American eyes looks and feels unmistakably Russian. You can take the country out of Chekhov but you can't take Chekhov out of The Cherry Orchard.

Madame Ranyevskaya's adopted daughter Varya played by Severn Thompson is clever and hardworking, but plain, not nearly as pretty or young as Madame Ranyevskaya's 17-year-old real daughter Anya (Robin Evan Willis), and resigned to a unmarried state even though she's in love with Lopakhin. It's Varya who throws down the keys in disgust and walks out the door after Lopakhin has bought the cherry orchard.

For good measure, Chekhov throws in the peripatetic Russian student Petya Trofimov (Gord Rand) who looks down on intelligentsia as well as capitalism and preaches the gospel of hard work for the good of all the underdogs, while Charlotta (Gabrielle Jones) Anya's German governess, is slightly dotty but entertaining in a way that surpasses any card tricks she might employ - an irresistible combination. Even the servants have a distinctive personality. The practical, pretty Dunyasha (Julie Martell) is busy cultivating a love triangle between herself and two other men, including the pompous, pretentious Yasha (Mark Uhre)and Craig Pike's melancholy, fateful office clerk, Yelpikhodov, while the elderly Firs (Al Kozlik) lives in the past with his memories of the glory days of the cherry orchard and making jam for the masses.

It is Firs who will be left behind, forgotten, ill and at the point of death as the others rush off to a new or different or similar life they've had. Tears are dried and lives lived in the once grand estate, are already a dim memory. Byrne's measured, production ends almost as quietly as its began but speaks loudly about how inconstant life can be. The Cherry Orchard plays in repertoire at the Court House Theatre until Oct. 2.
(Reviewed by Jeniva Berger)

Playwright Mary Chase wrote her Pulitzer prize-winning play Harvey in 1944, a year before World War II ended in the Pacific. Chase, who had been born into a poor working class Catholic family in Denver, was surrounded by the Irish myths her mother told her, and her brother’s keen sense of comedy. While he went on to become a circus clown, Chase became a a society columnist for the Rocky Mountain News, giving her some solid background material for the social climbing sister of Harvey's Elwood P. Dowd, and his snooty niece, Myrtle May.
Photo: by Cylla von Tiedemann. Peter Krantz as Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey.

Though her first two plays were failures, Chase hit the jackpot with Harvey, even though it went through two years of serious re-writing by Chase before it opened on on Nov. 1, 1944. It subsequently became the 6th longest running play in Broadway history. Chase edged out Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie for the Pulitzer Prize in 1945, but never wrote another stage play that came close to the spectacular career that Harvey had earned through the years.

It wasn’t too shabby a life for a six-foot rabbit named Harvey, who only lived in the imagination of his gentle, alcoholic soul mate Elwood P. Dowd. Elwood is a gentleman to the core, so thoroughly unprepossessing and naive - qualities that Peter Krantz conveys so elegantly - that he's completely oblivious to the sometimes less than genteel folks he meets at his favorite local bar. When it comes to believing in Harvey, however, he has a steely resolve. Harvey, Elwood's "pooka," a name borrowed from a Celtic myth inspired by Chase's mother, is treated like a permanent guest, given a place at the dinner table, at the card table, and introduced to anyone who comes to the house.

It's not something that endears Elwood to his scatty socialite sister Veta played by Mary Haney. When Elwood unexpectedly comes home during one of Veta's ladies' social get togethers called the Wednesday Forum, Harvey doesn't exactly find a welcome mat. It doesn't deter Elwood from taking him around to meet the ladies. Veta and her snippy daughter Myrtle May (Zarrin Darnell-Martin) are so heartily embarrassed that they resolve to have Elwood put in a rest home called Chumley's Rest.

Chumley's Rest, a name which calls up images of dotty people with more money than problems, being cajoled by kind hearted nurses and doctors who don't know what they've got themselves into, is more than a rest home, it is a viable spot for the burlesque to begin. And it begins with a bang when Veta - Mary Haney at her quirkiest best here - is mistaken for the patient by the admitting doctor and is taken kicking and screaming into the hydro room, while the unsuspecting Elwood has come upstairs looking for his sister and ends up charming the pretty nurse (Diana Donnelly) with his chivalry, and fooling Dr. Chumley's young assistant Dr. Sanderson (Gray Powell) who believes that Elwood is the sane one in the family.

As for the sanctimonious Dr. Chumley played by Norman Browning, he's exactly what the doctor ordered for every farcical comedy which featured a pompous psychiatrist who didn't know a delusion from a diversion. But Chase has given even Dr. Chumley some very human characteristics which are revealed after a few drinks with Elwood and a six-foot white rabbit who knows how to fix anyone's shortcomings.

Director Joseph Ziegler's delightful production, has brought out the best in everyone from Norman Browning's pretentious Dr. Chumley to Donna Belleville's morbid high society matron, from Mary Haney's idiosyncratic Veta to Peter Krantz's whimsical Elwood. As for Harvey, the pooka who insinuates himself into every social setting and corner tavern, even Veta finally realizes that putting up with a six foot rabbit at the dinner table is better than having Elwood turn into someone who gripes at strangers.

When Elwood is just about to be given an injection by Dr. Chumley that will make him like everyone else, the question is finally put to Veta what she wants done with Elwood. The taxi cab driver answers it for her. "Lady after this, he'll be a perfectly normal human being and you know what bastards they are."

Besides its subtle message about how we have to see beyond what's in front of our eyes, Chase's play is very funny. Laughter, after all, really is the best medicine. Harvey plays in repertoire at the Royal George Theatre until Oct. 31.
(Reviewed by Jeniva Berger).

I have just seen my first production in the Shaw Festival’s new Studio Theatre and am truly impressed. It is large and spacious, but only six rows deep, in the round so everyone is close to the performances on its spacious stage. The Studio Theatre opened last season with a one-person show by Benedict Campbell, which I missed.

Photo: by Emily Cooper. L to R: Kelly Wong, Graeme Somverville in Serious Money.

This season, the Studio Theatre is home to a production of Caryl Churchill’s Serious Money. The eighteen players are often given multiple roles to play, some as many as four. If I may quote Linda Loman, “Attention must be paid”. With so many characters and short scenes, it is sometimes difficult to follow the subtleties of Churchill’s script, but you can catch the key parts of the story by following three characters. Graeme Sommerville as Corman, Ali Momen as Zackerman and Marla McLean as Scilla are the main movers in a play that is built around the Stock Market and the double dealing that often goes on. Ms. McLean is particularly riveting as a young woman in search of answers.

Eda Holmes, one of the Festival’s best directors, moves this play through the evening with almost military precision. The cast has learned how to move on an exchange floor and all the appropriate signals. The mood is strongly set by performances of David Schurmann, Anthony Bekenn and Lorne Kennedy.

The show is shigh energy and it assaults the senses, greatly aided by the musical direction and sound of Reza Jacobs, as well as the design work of Peter Hartwell and Kevin Lamotte. The show is on a short run and is well worth seeing, both for the production and for the terrific space in which it is produced. Serious Money plays a the Studio Theatre until September 12.
(Reviewed by Ric Wellwood, a London Ontario based freelance theatre critic.)

The Shaw Festival’s late season openings include a new work from Canadian actress/playwright Linda Griffiths. The Age of Arousal is built around an earlier work by English Author George Gissing. It deals primarily with the suffrage movement in London during the 1880’s, and even more directly with relationships among women, both familial and carnal.

Photo: by David Cooper. L to R: Gray Powell, Jenny Young in The Age of Arousal.

The story shifts around a committed suffragette who trains women towards independence by teaching them the use of typewriters, a relatively-new invention that was transforming the workplace. She is aided by her friend and lover, Rhoda Nunn. The two are at the heart of the work and the pressures of their work and personal relationships are tested by the arrival of a needy trio of sisters.

Though the Shaw Festival has always had a wealth of talented actresses, it is unusual for The Age of Arousal and The Women to be playing in the same season, since both require large casts of gifted women. We may never again see this wealth of womanly roles displayed with such strength. Donna Belleville is the powerful suffragette, committed to freeing women from traditional roles and dependency upon the whims of men. Jenny Young is her partner and protégé, and she balances their relationship with skill and insight.

Among the sisters are a transvestite played with impact by Kelli Fox, a dependent older sister portrayed with sensitivity and grief by Sharry Flett, and Zarrin Darnell-Martin as the youngest sister who is more concerned with sex than birth control. The show is directed at the Courthouse Theatre by the Shaw’s artistic Director Jackie Maxwell. Linda Griffiths couldn’t have hoped for a better production of her work. The show will speak volumes to both men and women, though I think women will relate better to the content. Men will respond to the form. The Age of Arousal plays in repertoire until October 10 at the Court House Theatre.
(Reviewed by Ric Wellwood, a London Ontario based freelance theatre critic.)

An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde. Directed by Jackie Maxwell. April 9 to Oct. 31. Opens May 26. In An Ideal Husband, by Oscar Wilde, fate catches up to Government Minister Sir Robert Chiltern when a mysterious woman produces a letter which reveals a past misdeed and a choice must be made between public scandal and the private shame of his wife. This Oscar Wilde work is a perfect mix of Wilde wit and intrigue. The Shaw Festival Theatre presents the social satire written by Oscar Wilde during his time at Goring on Thames. With An Ideal Husband, Oscar Wilde wanted to ensure he would enjoy public fame, and he was an advocate of making plays accessible to the public. Patrons of the Shaw Festival theatre in Niagara will love this adaptation of a comedic classic by Oscar Wilde. Featuring Steven Sutcliffe, Catherine McGregor, Patrick Galligan and Moya O'Connell.
(Photo: by Emily Cooper. L to R: Krista Colosimo, Steven Sutcliffe, Jenny L. Wright)

The Women by Clare Booth Luce. Directed by Alisa Palmer. May 12 to Oct. 9. Opens May 29. Welcome to a secret society – the world of women. In The Women, a 1930s Broadway hit by Clare Boothe Luce, a Manhattan socialite finds out her husband is cheating on her, and her girlfriends are no help at all. With manicured claws, these women are fighting to maintain their status while scheming to leave, steal or win back their own husbands. This classic play captures a world that only half the population ever really gets to see. A revealing

(look into the lives of the ladies-who-lunch that is clever, cut-throat and full of outrageous humor. Featuring Jenny Young and Deborah Hay.
(Photo: Laurie Paton, Deborah Hay and Julie Martell)

The Doctor's Dilemma by Bernard Shaw. Directed by Morris Panych. June 10 to Oct. 30. Opens July 9. A doctor who has discovered a lifesaving cure must make an impossible decision. Who should he treat: a kindly colleague who serves the poor, or an extremely talented but unscrupulous young artist, who also happens to have a beautiful young wife? When there’s only room for one more, who can he afford to save? The Doctor’s Dilemma is Bernard Shaw’s comic exploration of the medical establishment and the value of art. Featuring Patrick Galligan, Krista Colosimo, Michael Ball and Thom Marriott.
(Photo:Graeme Somerville, Richard Stewart, Andrew Bunker, Mark Uhre and Peter Krantz)

The Cherry Orchard by Anton Chekhov, Adapted by Tom Murphy. Directed by Jason Byrne. April 20 to Oct. 2. In The Cherry Orchard, Anton Chekhov tells the tale of an aristocratic family whose way of life seems to be disappearing, and with it, their beloved cherry orchard. On the verge of financial collapse, will they finally make the decision to sell their land to make way for holiday cottages? Or will they remain in blissful denial of the unstoppable nature of progress? This adaptation of The Cherry Orchard by one of Ireland’s leading contemporary playwrights, maintains all the

power of this Russian classic, with an Irish twist. Featuring Jim Mezon, Laurie Paton, and Benedict Campbell.
(Photo: Al Kozlik, Ken James Stewart, Ric Reid and Goldie Semple)

John Bull's Other Island by Bernard Shaw. Directed by Christopher Newton. June 18 to Oct. 9. Opens July 10.The Shaw Festival presents John Bull’s Other Island – a comedy by Bernard Shaw in which friends and business partners Broadbent and Doyle travel to a small town in Ireland with a business deal in mind. The Englishman, Broadbent, falls in love with everything about the place, including Nora Reilly, Doyle’s old flame. Doyle, the hometown boy, only sees a country trapped in its past. Shaw’s unromantic look at the romance of Ireland, and a play so funny that at a royal command performance, King Edward VII laughed so hard he broke his chair. Featuring Benedict Campbell, Graeme Somerville and Jim Mezon.
(Photo: Patrick Galligan.)

Age of Arousal by Linda Griffiths. Wildly Inspired by The Odd Women by George Gissing. Directed by Jackie Maxwell. July 23 to Oct. 10. Opens Aug. 13. It’s 1885 in Age of Arousal, and in London there are half a million more women than men. Mary, an ex-suffragette, has opened a secretarial school for women to teach liberation through typing. When three sisters sign up, unexpected passions and secret desires are unleashed as they each learn what being a New Woman can truly mean. A contemporary look at the Shaw Festival mandate by an award-winning writer. (Strong sexual content). Featuring Donna Belleville and Jenny Young.
(Photo: Nicolá Correia-Damude)

Harvey by Mary Chase. April 1 to Oct. 31. Opens May 29. Directed by Joseph Ziegler. Everyone wants to meet Elwood Dowd and his friend Harvey. When they enter a room, strangers soon become friends and people want to share a drink with them. But Harvey is a six-foot invisible rabbit and Elwood’s sister wants him gone. The question is – does the world need another "normal" chap, or more Harveys? A new look at this Pulitzer Prize-winning play by Mary Chase, made famous by Jimmy Stewart’s portrayal of the loveable Elwood Dowd in the 1950 film. Featuring Peter Krantz, Corrine Koslo and Norman Browning.
(Photo by Emily Cooper. Peter Krantz and Diana
Donnelly)

One Touch of Venus Music by Kurt Weill, Lyrics by Ogden Nash, Book by Ogden Nash and S.J. Perleman. Directed by Eda Holmes. May 16 to Oct. 10. Opens May 28. The ancient goddess of love visits Manhattan in this musical fantasy. A modern art collector brings a statue of Venus to town. Through the magic of a ring, Venus comes to life, falls for a barber named Hatch and chases him all over New York. But will this wild woman allow herself to be tamed? A comic caper from the pen of the Marx Brothers’ writer S.J. Perelman and New Yorker poet

Ogden Nash, with classic Weill songs like “Speak Low” and “I’m A Stranger Here Myself.”
(Photo: Sacha Dennis)

Half an Hour by J.M. Barrie. June 26 to Oct. 9. Opens July 10. Lunchtime Theatre. Directed by Gina Wilkinson. How much can a life change in half an hour? One night, just before a dinner party, Lilian Garson makes an escape from her confining husband. But when these best-laid plans go horribly awry – can she quickly slip back into her old life in time for dinner at eight? A compelling story of a woman who’s only got half an hour to change her life. Featuring Diana Donnelly and Peter Krantz.
( Photo: Marla McLean)

Serious Money by Caryl Churchill. Directed by Eda Holmes. July 31 to Sept. 12. Opens Aug. 14. Serious Money takes a look at the London Stock Market in the 1980s, a place that was like the new Wild West – a land of corporate raiders and stock traders created by a financial boom that seemed to have no end. The Shaw Festival is proud to present this no-holds barred look at corporate greed and financial excess – Caryl Churchill at her most provocative and penetrating. And all in rhyming verse! Featuring Marla McLean, Ali Momen, Grame Somerville and Ken James Stewart.
(Strong language).
(Photo:Robin Evan Willis, Ali Momen and Kyle Blair)

The Shaw Festival also offers a number of enrichment programs for visitors to the beautiful Niagara region and the Festival 2010. Seminars, Workshops, Symposiums - discover more about playwrights, productions and theatre from actors, directors, designers and scholars. Please see the brochure/shawfest.com for a complete listing. As well there are a number of programs youths including For Young People, the Shaw Theatre School, Teen Workshops, the Shaw Summer Camp, Teacher Days, and three Saturdays in May. All offer a variety of ways young people can become more acquainted with the theatre.

Theatre and Dining packages will please individuals as well as corporate groups, and Winery Packages will introduce visitors to the great selection of fine table wines and dining packages from the Niagara on the Lake wine estates, or you can order a Shaw Picnic and Shaw Gourmet Picnic for al fresco enjoyment.

For theatre tickets and full season brochures, please phone the Shaw Festival box office at 1-800-511-7429. Brochures and tickets may also be ordered through the website at www.shawfest.com.