That Weekend at Niagara When We Hardly Saw the Falls

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada is a place where the main street is so quiet that it only has one traffic light on the entire expanse — and it’s a blinking red. I go one street over to the bed and breakfast where I’ll be staying, and I hear a clang-dang of a bell coming from a large white truck sauntering behind me. Oh, good — an ice cream man! Yeah, I could use a large chocolate cone dipped in semi-sweet chocolate. (Hey, if it’s semi-sweet, it has to have fewer calories, right?)

But this is not an ice cream man driving down the street. He is — get this — a
knife sharpener. I blink. You mean to tell me there’s a man who assumes that
people need their knives sharpened this badly that they’d wait for him to drive
down the street? Well, in fact, yes, I learn, when I suddenly see a woman run out of her house and literally chase the truck down the street, yelling after it. She has to run after him a good 10 seconds before he hears her and stops.

As I pull my luggage out of the trunk, I see another truck — this one for Castle Plumbing and Heating — pull in front of the bed and breakfast next door to mine. The driver jumps out — and I see that he’s wearing a Shaw Festival T-shirt. It’s from 1990, I’ll grant you, but still, he’s wearing it. And while there’s a plethora of cutesy-poo shops with names like “Just Christmas” on that main street — and
more tchotchkes in them than Cats has had performances worldwide — I’m
betting the reason people are flocking the streets is that aforementioned Shaw
Festival. Walk down that main street, and you’ll see tickets sticking out of virtually
every man’s shirt pocket. Some couples smile in delight when they spot other
twosomes, before each simultaneously says, “Nice to see you this year!”

Funny; many theaters that officially include the word “repertory” in their names — Berkeley Repertory Theatre, San Jose Repertory, South Coast Repertory, and New Jersey Repertory Company — actually don’t do repertory. Each of them instead does a show for a few weeks at a time, then closes it, then opens a new production, and repeats the process four, five, or six times a year. But repertory
really means staging one play on one night, and a different one the next. In other
words, the actor playing Pseudolus does a comedy tonight, while the actress
portraying Domina plays Medea later this week.

But here at the Shaw Festival, the troupe that doesn’t use the word “repertory” in
its name certainly delivers it. The 2004 season opened on April 2 with The
Importance of Being Earnest at its 328-seat Royal George Theatre — but six
days later, Pygmalion opened down the street at the 869-seat Festival
Theater. Pygmalion had the house all to itself for only 16 days, for the third
play — Three Men on a Horse — opened there on April 24. Lest Earnest feel lonely, Pal Joey joined it at the Royal George on May 11. Only two days later, the Shaw put its third theater to use — the 327-seat The Court House — with Ah, Wilderness!

Five shows in rep is an achievement for any troupe, but the Shaw was just getting started. On June 4, John Murrell’s wartime drama, Waiting for the Parade, showed up at the Court House, as did Githa Sowerby’s 1912 drama, Rutherford and Son four days later. These lucky seven played matinee and
evening performances, but someone at Shaw was obviously bothered that the houses weren’t being used in the mornings. So, on June 16 at the Court House, J.M. Synge’s 1907 one-act, The Tinker’s Wedding, opened for 11:30am showings — meaning the Shaw Festival was offering real “matinees” in the original sense of the French word. More matinees came with Terence Rattigan’s 1948 one-acter, Harlequinade, when it opened at the Royal George on August 11, for its 11:30am showings. By then, Shaw’s Man and Superman (June 26) and Adam Guettel and Tina Landau’s Floyd Collins (Aug. 3) had joined the repertory. And if those weren’t enough, on Aug. 14, Canadian writer George F. Walker’s Nothing Sacred showed up at the Festival Theatre, making for an even dozen attractions — at least for 22 days. One by one, they do close, though the first (Earnest) shall be last to shutter, on Dec. 4.

I notice that the Rodgers family is well represented here, with Richard’s Pal Joey and grandson Guettel’s Floyd Collins both showing. Too bad they didn’t bridge the two with Richard’s daughter and Adam’s mother Mary’s musicals, but the Shaw Festival has a particular mission that precludes this. The organization began in 1962 with the intention to only do plays by GBS. Two years later, though, they let in an O’Casey — Shadow of a Gunman — and decided
any playwright who wrote during Shaw’s lifetime (1856-1950) was eligible. Then, in 2000, plays that were set in Shaw’s lifetime were embraced as well. So with Once upon a Mattress, set well before Shaw’s time, and Hot Spot (about the American Peace Corps) slightly after, Mary’s out-of-luck. So’s
Shakespeare, which — as all Frogs fans can tell you — means that Shaw won’t have to turn over in his grave. Bad enough that one of this year’s plays — The Importance of Being Earnest — takes a swipe at the vegetarian lifestyle, of which Shaw was a member.

Alas, I’ll only be seeing eight of the shows, and what really hurts is that Pal
Joey won’t be one of them. Maxwell decided to put it in a small house, and must regret it at least a bit, given that it’s the season’s smash sellout, and probably would have filled the Festival Theater. I go to there to pick up my seats, and after I do, I scan the press kit and find a student’s study guide for Three Men on a Horse. I’m impressed that it mentions that in 1961, a musical, Let It Ride, was made of the farce. True, if the study guide writers were really on the ball, they would have included the 1941 musical version, Banjo Eyes, but I’m going to look at the glass as more than half-full.

Then I notice in the lobby four long rows of pictures — 26-picture rows, in fact, offering 104 actors in all. (Well, 105, what with artistic director Jackie Maxwell pictured to the actors’ left.) I scanned all 104 of the actors — and knew absolutely no one. I had a feeling, though, that my ignorance would fade pretty soon. For once I saw the second, third, and fourth plays, I’d be saying, “You mean to tell me that the person who played the tough guy in that play was the nice guy in this one?” And the ultimate payoff would occur by play eight: “Oh! How wonderful! So-and-so is in this one, too!”

But we’ll see once I get inside. I give my ticket to The Importance of Being
Earnest to the usher, who, I’ve already noticed, is awfully genteel; neither she
nor her co-worker rips tickets in half and keeps some of it, but each gives every
ticket a dainty quarter-inch tear. Yeah, this is another world up here, and I have a
feeling I’m going to see an Elite Eight shows.

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[To contact Peter Filichia directly, e-mail him at pfilichia@theatermania.com]