Theatre Review: Candida (Orange Tree)

Martin Hutson as Morell and Claire Lams as Candida.
(Photograph: Johan Persson)

Among the continuities that Paul Miller's tenure at the Orange Tree has preserved with Sam Walters' Artistic Directorship is the frequent presentation of George Bernard Shaw's plays. Focusing so far on the early work, Miller's smart, assured takes on Widowers' Houses and The Philanderer (I missed 2017's Misalliance) have shown how Shavian drama, which  sometimes seems sluggish in bigger auditoria, can spark to life in the Orange Tree's intimate space.

This proves the case again with Candida, Miller's fourth Shaw at the OT. Written in 1894, it's a play in which conflicting ideas and attitudes underpin a love triangle, as the playwright paints a satirical portrait of cusp-of-the-century London that contrasts faith versus social justice; honesty versus self-deception; the poet and the preacher.

The heroine is the wife of Reverend James Morell, a Christian Socialist clergyman who has dissociated himself from his father-in-law, Burgess, an East End factory owner, due to his exploitation of women workers. Morell’s love rival is 18-year-old Eugene Marchbanks, a poet of aristo background who is 15 years younger than Candida. 

Martin Hutson as Morell and Joseph Potter as Marchbanks 
(Photograph: Johan Persson)

Candida's choice between the poet’s flamboyance and vigor and the clergyman’s dedication and reliability drives the plot. There are indulgent moments but Miller and the cast keep the proceedings fleet and funny throughout. Velvet-voiced Claire Lams comes into her own as Candida, conveying precisely what Shaw specifies as the "largeness of mind and dignity of character to ennoble her cunning in the affections". Martin Hutson brings charisma and energy to Morrell and, completing the triangle, Joseph Potter throws himself into the role of Marchbanks with gusto in a distinguished professional debut.   

In support, Kwaku Mills camps amusingly as the junior cleric Alexander Mill and Sarah Middleton - operating in a very different mode to her last OT appearance in Pomona - generates some of the evenings biggest laughs as Morrell's secretary Proserpine Garnett, alongside Michael Simkins as the problematic pater. 

Placing newspaper headlines and Socialist pamphlets of the period around the set, Simon Daw’s design doesn't allow us to forget the historical context. The conclusion won't please everyone but Miller's enjoyable production offers plenty of delights. 

Booking until 31 January. Further information here.

Theatre Review: The Philanderer (Orange Tree)

Rupert Young in The Philanderer (Photo: Richard Davenport)

“This is going to be a cheerful evening…” sighs Leonard Charteris (Rupert Young), the (anti-)hero of George Bernard Shaw’s The Philanderer. Romancing his current lover Grace (Helen Bradbury), Leonard has been interrupted by Julia (Dorothea Myer-Bennett), the clingy paramour he’s very keen to be rid of. It’s (near-)turn-of-the-century London, and these three pride themselves upon being people of “advanced views”, for whom conventional romantic arrangements and stereotypical gender roles are anathema. But through their interactions, and those with Grace and Julia’s fathers, Shaw shows the complexities and contradictions of their stance, which, the play suggests, may be self-serving or self-deluding as much as liberating.

 

The hipster-friendly poster design for Paul Miller’s production of Shaw’s 1893 play tips us off to its approach: performed in modern-dress, this is a staging that seeks to blow the cobwebs off of Shavian drama, contrasting with the more traditional mode of Miller’s excellent production of Widowers’ Houses, seen at the OT in late 2014.

 

The loosely modern approach may feel counter-intuitive: The Philanderer is, after all, very much a play of its time, with its ambivalent take on the figure of the “New Woman,” its critique of antiquated divorce laws, its Wildean epigrams, and its wry assimilations of Ibsen’s influence. (In Simon Daw’s characteristically terrific design, a bust of the playwright looks down on the protagonists and the audience in the production central section, replacing the first Act’s glittering chandelier.)

 

But Miller, always sensitive, doesn’t overdo contemporary parallels, and starting with a kiss, the production feels vibrant and sexy for the most part. Principal among its pleasures are the attractive performances of a fine cast, with Rupert Young making Leonard a charismatic mixture of connivance and candour; Helen Bradbury bringing poise and gravitas to Grace; and Dorothea Myer-Bennett suggesting the pain beneath Julia’s very funny emotional poses.

Michael Lumsden and Mark Tandy contribute a cherishable double act as the patriarchs, and the stylish Paksie Vernon makes the most of her scenes as Julia’s sister. And Christopher Staines gets the production’s funniest moment as the doctor who’s distressed to discover that his cherished new theory has been disproved by better-funded European rivals.    

There’s a slight plunge into tedium in the final stages, partly because Miller has chosen to include both of Shaw’s third Acts, making for a patience-testing conclusion that could have used some judicious editing. It’s far from Shaw’s most perfectly constructed work, and the staging doesn’t have the total assurance of Miller’s perfectly pitched revival of French Without Tears (which is making a welcome return to the OT in July - book now!). Still, The Philanderer is highly enjoyable, offering a marriage of tradition and modernity that makes for a cheerful evening, after all. 

                         

The Philanderer is booking until 25 June.

Theatre Review: Widowers' Houses (Orange Tree)

  

In his seminal Drama from Ibsen to Brecht, Raymond Williams’s dismisses George Bernard Shaw’s Widowers’ Houses - the playwright’s 1892 play on the subject of “slum-landlordism” - as “a crude intrigue melodrama, mechanically contrived to be explicitly rhetorical about slums, and to involve everyone on the stage in a condonation of criminality.” The play, the critic contends, is “very thin stuff.” But such complaints aren’t borne out by Paul Miller’s strong, spry, swift production, just opened at the Orange Tree, which makes a good case for the play as a work of much greater interest and appeal than Williams’s remarks suggest.

  

The play, Shaw’s first, addresses the moral quagmire faced by the young Dr. Harry Trench, when he learns that the father of his fiancée makes his money from exploiting impoverished tenants. But as the drama weighs the perspectives of its protagonists – from the landlord Sartorius, the fiancée Blanche , the agent Lickcheese and Trench’s prissy chum Cokane - it gradually becomes apparent - in true ironical Shavian fashion – that Trench himself is much more deeply implicated in the exploitation than he would have imagined.

  

As an investigation of London’s housing problems, Widowers’ Houses doesn’t lack for timeliness or contemporary relevance. Starting out as highly mannered, epigram-heavy comedy of the English abroad (casually xenophobic and forever consulting their Baedekers), the piece gradually moves into darker territory, showing all of its characters to be motivated by financial concerns. The ironies aren’t subtle, but they are pointedly and thought-provokingly made, though the play trips up a little in its final stretch, which includes an unlikely transformation for one character.

  

Miller’s production finds exactly the right tonal balance for the first two Acts, though, and is aided by the efforts of a great cast. Patrick Drury’s Sartorious combines affability with quiet steeliness and menace to compelling effect. Stefan Adegbola does delicious high style comedy as the pompous Cokane, forever taking Trench to task for his lack of “taste” and “tact”. Alex Waldmann, as Trench, subtly shows sweetness and social conscience morphing into spinelessness. And Rebecca Collingwood makes an absolutely terrific professional debut as the pert, unpleasant Blanche, expressing her hatred of “the poor” and memorably turning on her maid (Lotti Maddox) with startling ferocity. Not a play without some flaws, then, but this is a fine, funny and intelligent production.

  

Booking until 31 January. Further information here.