THE SHAW VARIETY SHOW and THE ROLL OF SHAW - REVIEW OF 2024 SHAW FESTIVAL PRODUCTIONS

Reviewed by James Karas 

The Shaw Variety Show and The Roll of Shaw are two of the five free-wheeling cabaret-type performances to be presented this summer at the Shaw Festival in the 150-seat Spiegeltent behind the Festival Theatre. The Spiegeltent looks like a bar and the customers see  actors performing improv acts and involving the audience. The Shaw Variety Show opened on May 17 and will run until October 6, 2024. I saw the May 23 performance.

Kristopher Bowman created the show and he, together with Cosette Derome, Manami Hara, Travis Seetoo and Shawn Wright performed the various skits.

The show was engaging, entertaining, silly and funny. The actors poked fun at themselves (“please keep coming so we can get paid”) engaged the audience (singing Happy Birthday to two audience members) and kept us amused for about 90 minutes.

Bowman, famous for adorning Harlequin romance covers, they tell us, was our ebullient and energetic host. Seetoo was the music director, played a guitar and sang a Gordon Lightfoot song.

Bowman devised takeoffs on game shows like The Price is Right and the energetic actors did their bit providing humor and antics while playing the games. One of them sang a song in Korean and another sang in Japanese. It was noteworthy and laudable that they introduced actors from diverse backgrounds and let them perform in the language of their origin.

Manami Hara taught us how to count in Japanese and we joined her in singing a song in her native language. Jonathan Tan from Malaysia was “interviewed” by Bowman and he managed to be witty and provide some information about his performing career and ability with various accents. And no, he has not a string of 2500 Duolingo lessons and he did not sing for Queen Elizabeth II, if I understood correctly.

There is a hilarious town meeting in old Niagara-on-the-Lake where they advise citizens how to deal with coyotes and skunks. Americans in the audience are declared prisoners of war and sing the town anthem.

The Roll of Shaw is the second such feature and I saw it on June 13. It was not as successful as The Shaw Variety Show but as our host Travis Seetoo noted it was a performance “never seen before and never to be seen again.” The fact that the air conditioning system did not work was an unfortunate feature on a very hot afternoon.

Seetoo wants us to see role-playing, in effect the actor’s life. He devised whodunnit and had two actors sitting at a table adlib plot details as he prompted them. Imagine you are Eliza Doolittle of My Fair Lady leaving Professor Higgins or Ann Whitefield of Man and Superman. Now imagine a meeting of the International Socialist Society where Ann is talking with Eliza. Shaw arrives at the meeting and he is stabbed. Who done it?

In the heat and perspiration of that afternoon Shane Carty and Cosette Derome were not inspired on June 13, the date that I saw it, to come up with enough witty lines to carry the afternoon. The audience was not in a good mood and the actors, especially in situations like that, need feedback and very little was coming to them. As Seetoo told us it was a show not seen before and never to be seen again and that should apply to the malfunctioning air conditioning system.
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The Shaw Variety Show and The Roll of Shaw  continue until October 6 and September 28, 2024, respectively at the Spiegeltent, Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com

James Karas is the Senior Editor, Culture of The Greek Press