The Shaw Redemption

When the plays all start to look the same--the same yo-yoing up and down and see-sawing across the stage to make "pictures", with people in intimate dialogue shouting at each other from opposite ends while dressing a turkey or undressing themselves--and all start to sound the same--the same characters distinguished by little ticks that recur in slightly different form at least twice more to provide the illusion of individuality and meaning--when sitting there becomes a matter of repressed depression followed by repressed screaming---well

it's time for something different. My travel budget (being zero) does not allow for much viewing elsewhere, let alone major stages. New York. London. Even San Francisco. So what's the answer, to escape from this brittle sameness?

Lately it's been a set of DVDs, British television productions of plays by George Bernard Shaw. First, there's Shaw: a playwright seldom done hereabouts, whose plays are more radically different than the supposedly innovative new shows. And for all their reputation as talky, walking ideas, they are well-made in a certain way, and certainly entertaining, besides entertaining ideas.

Then there's the acting. These productions seem mostly from the 1970s and 80s, so they often feature theatrical icons in their prime. Speaking of prime, the first one I saw was Maggie Smith in The Millionairess.

Maggie Smith in the early 1970s was not only a skillful actor with that indelible voice, she was beautiful. She photographs very beautifully in this play, which is basically a stage performance with some filmic inserts. And she was beautiful then, as I can attest, since I sat across the table from her at dinner for several hours. Well, she was sort of across and to the left, at the next table. (Yes, I've told this story before here. And I'm telling it again.) It was a theatre restaurant and bar in Boston, and I was accompanying another attractive woman, a TV theatre and film reviewer who later became the head of all PBS, Pat Mitchell. Pat actually had a better view of Maggie, but I was closer. (Later that evening I heard someone playing piano and singing and thought, he sounds like Joel Grey. I turned around to look. It was Joel Grey.)

For an "obscure" Shaw, The Millionairess is a treat. It also features Tom Baker in a pre-Doctor Who role. (This is a different production apparently from the BBC version, also with Maggie Smith, also available on DVD.)

Each of these DVDs actually has two plays. Mrs. Warren's Profession, a play that skewers capitalism more effectively than Michael Moore, is accompanied by You Never Can Tell, a precursor presumably of plays and film comedies with similar sorts of titles, and this one is energetic, both intelligent and happily funny. What a treat. The performances are wonderful.

The Devil's Disciple is not a very good play--the Burt Lancaster film is actually better, though it preserves only one speech, which Laurence Olivier happily delivers as General Burgoyne. But it is interesting, and has a nice pre-Picard performance by Patrick Stewart. Arms and the Man is lively, with probably the best performance I've seen by a bouyant, vibrant Helena Bonham Carter. Next I'm seeing Heartbreak House--I've seen another TV version several times, with Rex Harrison, but this one is with John Gielgud. There's a Pygmalion in the series but alas no Joan or Cleopatra.

These plays give fine actors great words, and they love it, glory in it, and show what they can really do. These plays are about something--issues of class, gender roles, politics, economics, war and peace--that we may need to mentally update and translate to our times, but are often very acute and timeless. And not just issues, but all kind of human concern illuminated by these flashing personalities that Shaw and these actors create.

The first couple of plays sent me to Shaw's prefaces, wonderful in themselves, and I found myself starting to read The Millionairess, hearing Maggie Smith say the lines all over again. I rented these DVDs from La Dolce Video (the new store on G that absorbed a lot of the Video Experience inventory.) But I think I'm going to buy the set. There are nights I need to hear some Shaw, or something. Some of those nights after an evening at the theatre.

Update 2014: I did buy the set.  And I've been enjoying them ever since.

Othello on Film: Olivier

I didn't realize until I read another review of the show that in my review I hadn't noted that Jabari Morgan, who played Othello at the Arcata Playhouse, is black. Partly that's because he gave a great performance as an actor, regardless of any additional category. But also I suppose I realized that discussing the racial politics of this role would take more words than I had in the print version of the review.

Othello is called a Moor, which could refer to a number of racial types. He is called (and calls himself) black, but that's a dodgy term historically. Even in the early 20th century America, some Italians were considered "black."

There has been a great scholarly argument especially over whether Shakespeare was referring to a North African-- a lighter-skinned Muslim Berber, or a darker skinned sub-Sahara African. In terms of Shakespeare's time in England, it could go either way. The internal evidence within the play is ambiguous, though I tend to be more persuaded by the Berber interpretation.

Nevertheless, it has become standard that actors of southern African descent have a corner on the Othello role. Now in the early 21st century it is so much so that when Patrick Stewart wanted to play the role, he did so (in Washington, D.C.) with a completely reversed cast--all the other actors, including Desdemona, were black.

But at least until the 1960s, the role was often played by white men in dark makeup. There may not have been enough black actors in England until the 20th century but the racism was overt in the U.S., where even the play itself was not allowed to be performed in some places in the South because of the interracial romance, regardless who played the parts. And even when the great African American actor Paul Robeson wanted to play the role, he had to play it in England first (opposite Peggy Ashcroft) before getting that opportunity in the U.S., more than a decade later. But Paul Robeson's performance opposite Uta Hagen in 1943 is one of the most famous American Othellos, and a tremendous hit--it played more than twice as many times on Broadway than any Shakespeare before or since.

Which brings us to the movies. The most famous filmed version of Shakespeare's Othello has to be the 1965 movie with Laurence Olivier as Othello. Olivier played Othello as a dark African, with something like a Caribbean accent. "I had rejected the modern trend towards a pale coffee-colored compromise," he wrote in his autobiography. He designed his own three layers of makeup, which took three hours to apply. He had prepared for the role by doing vocal exercises to deepen his voice. His stage performance was one of the triumphs of his career.

Though the filmed version of the stage production (with Frank Findlay as Iago and young Maggie Smith as Desdemona) was shot in just three weeks on obvious stage sets, there is enough camera movement to qualify it as a movie. Olivier often used external changes (he was famous for building new noses for himself) to get him in touch with the internal identity of the character. In this case he wanted to feel "black to my very soul."

In 1965, in the midst of the Civil Rights movement in the U.S. and more obvious racial variety in England, Olivier risked a lot, and he got a lot of criticism for--some said-- playing a stereotypical black, in an interpretation that made Othello's heritage a key to his passionate behavior. Others felt it honored the reality of a black character.

By contemporary standards, at the very least, Olivier overdoes it at times. But his portrayal is still powerful, and provides plenty of opportunity for debate, about Othello and race, separately and together. Though Olivier later wrote that the role is essentially unplayable, his acting is gripping at times.

Findlay played Iago with a working class accent, and later films would adopt and extend this approach.

Maggie and Me (and Lettice & Lovage)

I once had after-theatre supper with Maggie Smith, sort of.

Familiar to a new generation as Professor McGonagall in the Harry Potter movies, she was then known as the Oscar-nominated star of Travels With My Aunt, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie and other films. I was actually supping with Pat Mitchell, then the entertainment reporter for a Boston television station, now the head of PBS. The restaurant catered to Boston's theatre people, including those participating in touring shows. It was a lively place. At one point in the evening I heard someone playing the piano and singing who sounded a lot like Joel Grey, fresh from his Cabaret fame. I turned around: It was Joel Grey.

I was seated next to Pat but at the next table, across from me and a little to the left, was Maggie Smith, in town starring in Noel Coward's Private Lives. She was dining with a man older than both of us who I didn't recognize.  I had an unobstructed view of her any time I turned my head that way, but Pat was on my right and quite attractive as well, so I wasn't tempted to stare.  But I did turn to see her looking at her companion with those large, empathetic blue eyes, both hands on his arm.

I thought of that moment when reading that British playwright Peter Schaffer wrote Lettice and Lovage for Maggie Smith, at her request.  I could readily believe she could be very persuasive.

Shaffer was already famous for Equus and Amadeus, both serious plays focused on male characters (perhaps that's why they both end in "us.")  But Lettice and Lovage would be a comedy principally featuring older women.  The risk worked out well for both author and actor.  The play won a Best of the Year award in London, and when it came to Broadway in 1990, Maggie Smith (who played Lettice) won the Best Actress Tony.

This week Lettice and Lovage comes to Ferndale Rep, with Marilyn Foot as Lettice and the Rep's artistic director Marilyn McCormick reprising her role as Lotte from the Rep's production a decade ago.

"It's a sweet story about two women who basically don't fit into society, " says director Rene Grinnell.  "They form a friendship that eventually becomes what saves them."

Lettice (a name derived from the Latin word for gladness) Douffet is the dramatically-inclined and history-minded daughter of a Frenchwoman who ran an all-women theatrical troupe that performed Shakespeare in French.  But now she is a tour guide at a London house of historical significance, if not much interest.  As the play begins she is livening up her patter with flamboyant inaccuracies.  Lotte, her temperamental opposite, is her boss who fires her for this transgression.  This of course turns out to be the beginning rather than the end of their relationship.

The play deals playfully but meaningfully with issues of reality and fantasy, an authentic versus a conventional life, the present versus the past, and more topically, with the ugliness of contemporary buildings and the need to preserve classic architecture.

It is also very English in its references and humor (or humour) but the Ferndale production took this as a challenge.  "Everyone had a lot of fun doing the research on the history, the architecture and most of all on British life," Grinnell said.   Since Lettice and Lovage is still produced often in America, it must translate pretty well.