FFWD Weekly
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| Theatre by Nikki Sheppy Candida The worst critique is a bland one; guns a-blazing or songs a-praising always seems better appreciated. Make up your mind, damn it! Nobody likes milquetoast – which is why agnosticism so quickly loses its cachet. Yet Theatre Calgary’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s Candida stymies attempts at easy reduction. Ultimately, I suppose, it’s all so well done that I’m embarrassed to admit I didn’t especially enjoy it. The play tells the story of a love triangle between Reverend James Morell, his wife Candida and a young poet named Marchbanks. Comic relief comes in a number of forms: Morell’s severe but obviously lovelorn assistant, Proserpine; his whiny father-in-law, Mr. Burgess; and fellow priest, Alexander Mill. If there’s a mystery here, it’s the question of what’s actually going on – a question that’s resolved only after several befuddling encounters that take full advantage of everyone’s mounting paranoia. There is almost nothing that is patently wrong with Candida. The acting, the direction, the lighting and the period costuming are not just good – they’re excellent. Only the pacing suffers, spinning Act One into an agonizing eternity while Act Two pops as pleasantly as a champagne cork. Dennis Fitzgerald, as Morell, the socialist minister who begins to fear that his wife has fallen in love with young Marchbanks, turns in a terrific performance. A variety of arched brows and covert glances testifies to the fact that Fitzgerald has developed a facial expressiveness rarely seen in theatre. On stage, when facial vocabulary is inflated for the nose-bleeds, it all too often loses in breadth what it gains in amplification. Not so with Fitzgerald. It’s something Esther Purves-Smith has also evidently studied. As Proserpine, a 70 wpm model of secretarial efficiency whose thorniness masks her vulnerability, Purves-Smith is a hoot. Scowls, defiant pouts and a lot of grumpy bustling flush out her portrayal. Ben Carlson and Kate Hennig, who play Marchbanks and Candida respectively, are less diverse in their performances but together make for the best onstage chemistry, while James Brewer plays the gruff loiterer for maximum amusement. Only Christian Goutsis’s strangely skittish portrayal of Mills (somewhat reminiscent of a style that worked well for him in A Guide To Mourning) falls short in an otherwise stellar show. These are just a handful of the reasons it came as a total shock to me that I left the theatre feeling largely unwowed. Pizzazz is not something we look for in Shaw. High jinks and nutty escapades are definitely inappropriate in theatre that strives to mirror the unpredictable machinations of human behaviour – especially when it comes to love. Besides, I don’t really go in for nutty escapades. So what did I expect? Yet even the play’s intriguingly civilized love triangle and wry depiction of its characters somehow fail to provoke. Excellent in almost every respect, Candida is never quite compelling. The story is unmoving and the characters never quite matter. Fortunately, the unmistakable talent that powers the effort is enough to make the play worth seeing. |
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