Reviewed by James Karas
Shaw Festival, thank you for Our
Betters.
Our Betters is a play by Somerset Maugham that is now
playing at the Royal George Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake. It has never been
produced at the Shaw Festival and I dare say most of us have never heard of,
let alone have seen, this pleasant comedy.
Maugham wrote Our Betters in 1915 and took up the then familiar
topic of rich American heiresses marrying titled but financially strapped
Englishmen. “You give me a coronet and I will bring over a few million dollars”
was the bargain. No love or attraction or any other boring middle class
sentiments required.
American Pearl Saunders (Claire Jullien) married an English baronet and
became Lady Grayston of Grosvenor Square, Mayfair. Read: posh. Her sister
Bessie (Julia Course) has arrived from America and Pearl has set the wheels in
motion to find her a poor peer to marry.
Pearl is just one of a group of loaded Yanks who married pauper peers. Minnie
(Laurie Paton) became the Duchesse de Surennes and Flora (Catherine McGregor)
rose to Princess della Cercola.
Pearl has become a force in English society and is a serial adulteress,
in fact, a slut. She offers her body for sex and money. Minnie has money
therefore she can afford to buy sex and she finances a gigolo.
The play does have a centre of morality represented by Bessie, her
American friend Fleming (Wade Bogert-O’Brien) and Flora who has come to terms
with what she did and what she has become.
The rather straightforward and predictable plot has many pleasures.
Jullien is the perfect society woman; a smart and manipulative trend-setter who
uses men as if they are mere toys. She is counter-balanced by Course’s
well-done Bessie: a decent woman who almost falls into the
same trap as Lady Grayston.
Paton gives us a pathetic cougar as the aging Duchesse who has nothing
but money and sexual desire left. McGregor is excellent as the smart and
perceptive Princess and Lorne Kennedy is perfect as the rich, pretentious and
not-too-bright Fenwick, mere putty in the hands of Pearl who milks him for his
money.
Many Canadian actors have considerable difficulty affecting that
cut-diamond, upper crust English accent. In Our Betters the problem is
partially solved because we have Americans trying to do an English accent. They
do it indifferently but that is precisely what we expect of them. There is a problem
with the characters who are in fact English and Canadian actors must struggle
to deliver the chiseled goods.
Both Charles Gallant as the gigolo Tony and Ben Sanders as Lord Bleane,
the man who wants to marry Bessie, have that problem. This becomes more pronounced because Neil
Barclay as the super-sized American Thornton Clay pretends to be a perfect
Englishman. He is just a boorish American, of course, and his accent is perfect
and his performance very good.
The play is set in a drawing room in Mayfair and the morning room in
the country (if you are rich you can afford rooms for different times of the
day!). Set Designer Ken MacDonald does a splendid job. The Mayfair set is all
beige and most of the costumes are of similar hue. This creates a rarefied and
unreal world of elegance. The morning room with its patterned wall-paper and
leather couches strikes a different note of opulence that is so rich and so
country. Flick your wrist, please.
Morris Panych directs with panache. The timing, the pace, the humour
are all worked superbly. They do not make social circles or plays like the
world of Our Betters but it is a sheer pleasure to visit both for a
couple of hours in Niagara-on-the-Lake for a wonderful night (or afternoon) at
the theatre.
_____
Our Betters by W. Somerset Maugham will run in repertory until
October 27, 2013 at the Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.
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