Category Archives: Theater

A Dream of Red Pavilions

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Pan Asian Rep, red pavilions, red mansions

(photo: Vicki Weisfeld)

This iconic 18th-century Chinese novel has been ambitiously brought to life by Jeremy Tiang. Produced by the Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, it will play at Manhattan’s tiny Harold Clurman Theatre through February 14. Tiang wisely [!], pared down the novel’s 500 or so characters to fewer than 20, played by 10 actors. Multiple subplots also had to go, though the core story of two young lovers doomed by Jia family trickery remains.

In a 1958 article in The New Yorker, British literary critic Anthony West called The Dream of the Red Chamber (by author Cao Xueqin and, possibly, others) the equivalent of The Brothers Karamazov to Russian culture or Remembrance of Things Past to the French (or so says Wikipedia; the original article is not available online). Scholars who study the novel exclusively even have their own title—“redologists.”

It would be impossible to fully present not just the plot of the novel, but also its many insights into the ways Confucianism, Buddhist teaching, poetic sensibility, ancient myths and symbols, and belief in the spirit world affected everyday life in Qing Dynasty China. More clear to modern audiences is how court politics could disastrously affect even a prominent and wealthy clan such as the Jias.

To suggest some of this richness, the theater’s spare set is augmented by projections onto a large rear screen and two smaller side screens. Chinese music plays at just the right moments, and the costumes are spectacular. If you are familiar with classical Chinese literature (I’ve read the version of this novel called A Dream of Red Mansions; it’s also called Dream of the Red Chamber), you’ll be aware of what lies behind these glancing cultural allusions, though that is not at all necessary to enjoying the play as a semi-mythical, even allegorical work.

Tiang condenses the story about young love and the downfall of the Jia family to a multitude of brief scenes, and directors Tisa Chang and Lu Yu keep the action moving. The fine, mostly young cast members inhabit their roles beautifully, with special appreciation for Kelsey Wang as the doomed lover Lin Daiyu, and Mandarin Wu in several roles, notably the enchanting (and enchanted) dancer Fairy False. Amanda Centano delights as the maids.

While Anita Gates in the New York Times regarded the play as “a pretty curiosity,” I found it a rare treat.

The Piano Lesson

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piano

(photo: Ovi Gherman, creative commons license)

August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson is on stage at Princeton’s McCarter Theatre through February 7, one of his ten plays—The Century Cycle—set in Pittsburgh’s predominantly African American Hill District in different decades of the 20th century. The Piano Lesson and another play in the cycle, Fences, which McCarter produced two years ago, won the Pulitzer Prize.

The Piano Lesson takes place in 1936, in the midst of The Great Migration of southern blacks to northern industrial cities—Pittsburgh, Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago. One of its themes is the difference in perspective of visitors and newcomers from the rural south compared to their family members already established in the urban north.

The story centers on members of the Charles family and (with a captivating stage set showing both the urban neighborhood and the intimacy of the Charles’s home): Doaker, a cook on the railroad, his widowed niece Berniece, and her 11-year-old daughter. Their well-ordered routines are disrupted by the arrival from Sunflower County, Mississippi, of Berniece’s brother, Boy Willie, and his friend Lymon, who’ve driven north with a ramshackle truck full of watermelons to sell.

Boy Willie has been offered the chance to purchase the farmland of a white man (Sutter) who died under mysterious circumstances. He’s saved up some money for the purchase, the sale of the watermelons will help, and to seal the deal he needs the proceeds from selling the family piano. Berniece refuses to sell it. Carved on the piano is the story of their family going back to slavery days. So beyond the rural/urban, south/north divide, there is the tug-of-war between honoring the past versus enabling the future.

Further disrupting the family is the claim by each of the northern household that they’ve seen the ghost of the dead white man, and their willingness or unwillingness to believe that Boy Willie killed him. Playgoers can develop various theories as to the reality and significance of this particular ghost, but it’s clear that the characters are haunted by many ghosts, including those represented in the piano’s carvings, and, more immediately, Berniece and her uncle Wining Boy’s dead spouses.

The excellent cast—Stephen Tyrone Williams as Boy Willie (with an unbelievably long Act II monolog that possibly should be trimmed); Miriam A. Hyman as Berniece; John Earl Jelks as Doaker; and Cleavant Derricks as Doaker’s slick brother Wining Boy—is directed by Jade King Carroll. David Pegram was a perfect Lyman, a half-step behind and eager to become citified. There is much good humor in the characters’ interactions of the kind only close kin can indulge in.

The presence of a composer, sound designer, and music director in the crew credits suggests how significant music is in Wilson’s conception of the family and their story. The beautifully staged men’s work song about the Parchman Prison Farm is long, but not long enough!

The program for the play includes a helpful family tree of the Charles family, who can trace their lineage (thanks to the piano) back to Doaker’s and Wining Boy’s great-grandparents. This is an unusually full picture of family during slavery days, as demonstrated in Henry Louis Gates’s fascinating Finding Our Roots PBS television program. Reflecting on ancestors in slavery is powerful, as Regina Mason’s discovery of a great-grandfather who was a former slave, attests. These modern-day quests, three or four generations after the action of Wilson’s play, illuminate how some members of many families, like Boy Willie, wanted to put all that history behind them and how others, like Berniece, believed in keeping it close. In her case, the lessons of the piano were worth more than money.

Charles III

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Charles III

Tim Pigott-Smith in Charles III

The prize-winning play King Charles III, billed as a “future history play” and now on Broadway at the Music Box theatre, is a compelling theatrical conjecture. It anticipates the time when Queen Elizabeth is gone and her oldest son, Charles, is in position finally to become king. Charles, alas, has always been a person from whom little has been expected (some would say this is one reason QEII has hung on so long), a view which he himself has contributed to. His perceived rejection of Diana—“the world’s princess”—in favor of the unloved Camilla Parker-Bowles added fire to his critics, who had previously mustered little more than a yawn.

In the play, the Liberal Prime Minister assumes Charles will play the role of thoughtful rubber-stamp that his mother did, so well portrayed in The Audience (Helen Mirren as Queen) on Broadway earlier this year. Not so. In their very first meeting, Charles objects to a Liberal bill to restrict freedom of the press. As in a high-stakes chess game, parliamentary move and monarchal countermove ensue. In the fragile edifice of his family, the issue of controls on the frenzied media are of more than academic interest. The plot keeps turning and turning, and I won’t say more about it, except that I found it riveting.

Let’s talk about style. The simple set is intended to remind the audience of the Old Globe, showing shows five sides of an elegant brick structure. A frieze running around the entirety, about ten feet above the stage, comprises semi-abstract faces lit in various ways to denote “the people”—crowds, demonstrators, in other words, those most likely to be affected by the affairs of state on which Charles aspires to be a benevolent, active force.

The echoes of Shakespeare are more than visual. We have the machinations of Lady Macbeth, the indecisiveness of Richard II, the desperation of Lear. Written in blank verse, playwright Mike Bartlett’s language is often given an Elizabethan cadence, “Husband,” Kate calls to William, and nearly every scene ends in a rhyming couplet. This is artificial, but doesn’t seem artifice. Rather it reflects the tragedy, if tragedy is defined in the dramatic sense, as a fall from a great height, playing out before us. We are seeing critical precedents discussed and the weight of 1600 years of history. Such events are worthy of Shakespearean language in the country’s leaders, and not the territory of “Oh, whatever” or a graceless “WTF?”

The cast, which comes from London’s prestigious Almeida Theatre, is excellent. By training and experience, it manages this demanding language well. Tim Pigott-Smith is a heart-breaking Charles (The Telegraph of London calls it “the performance of his career”), and Margot Leicester is perfect as Camilla. I also especially liked pencil-thin Lydia Wilson as Kate and Richard Goulding as “the ginger idiot,” Harry. Adam James and Anthony Calf were fine as the Liberal and Conservative leaders, respectively. The program notes that many of the actors had vocal training, and that stands them in good stead in various scenes, in which solemn chanting (this is not a musical!) establishes a moody atmosphere, which is not to say there are no laughs elsewhere.

Bartlett also wrote the theatrical version of Chariots of Fire (seen in London in 2012 and greatly admired), among many others, and won a Best New Play award for Charles III. It’s nice to see something on Broadway that grapples with thought-worthy issues, including questions for which Americans are merely interested observers, like the future of the monarchy.

As in London, the production is directed by Rupert Goold, the award-winning Artistic Director of Almeida Theatre. I wondered what the U.K. critics thought of it, and found they quite approved. For example, critic Michael Billington in The Guardian said, “It gains traction as it goes along and by the end has acquired a borrowed grandeur through its Shakespearean form and a tragic dimension through the performance of Tim Pigott-Smith.” Agree. Whole-heartedly.

The Second Mrs. Wilson

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Woodrow Wilson, Edith Wilson, President

Woodrow and Edith Wilson

A timely new play at the George Street Playhouse in New Brunswick, NJ, especially for political junkies, is Joe DiPietro’s The Second Mrs. Wilson. You may recall that Woodrow Wilson suffered a debilitating stroke during his second term as President and that, for many months afterward, his second wife, Edith, was in all but title Chief Executive. Detractors called her the nation’s first female president.

This was the time when the treaty ending the appalling First World War was being considered. In Paris, Wilson had helped negotiate the treaty and, back in the States, he campaigned tirelessly for it. He’d been president of Princeton University (and, briefly Governor of New Jersey) before becoming President, so may have had an especially keen appreciation of the nearly 20 million soldier and civilian lives lost, worldwide, many of the soldiers young men who were age peers of those he’d led at the University. In 1919, he received the Nobel Peace Prize, then, on a public speaking tour to promote the treaty, he collapsed.

Edith was his second wife. For nearly 30 years, he’d been happily married to Ellen Axson, but she died early in his first term, a loss that left him devastated. Almost miraculously, it must have seemed, Edith Bolling appeared on the scene and renewed his zest for living.

A two-hour play necessarily collapses and condenses a great many events and emotions, and this play focuses on his love for his new wife and her dedication both to him and his foremost concern: ratification of the Versailles Treaty, which included adoption of the League of Nations. Wilson believed the League was the key to sustained world peace and the avoidance of future conflicts. But with him bedridden, the political forces rose against the League, dramatized in the play through Senator Henry Cabot Lodge. Republican opposition, combined with Wilson’s inability to consider any compromise in the legislative language, ultimately denied him this victory.

No one knows how history would have played out had America joined the League, but certainly the country’s post-war isolationism drastically weakened the organization during the period leading to World War II. Although the play is grounded in events of almost a century ago, we see today the problems of intransigent political opposition, when politicians make decisions not on what is best for the people they represent, their country, or the world, but their own political gain.

The play is brilliantly acted by John Glover (Wilson) and Laila Robins (Edith), whom we have seen and appreciated in numerous previous productions. Michael McGrath as Wilson’s aide Joe Tumulty and Stephen Spinella as his long-time colleague Col. Edward House are particularly poignant, facing their chief’s decline. The second act could be somewhat shorter, though Glover’s portrayal of Wilson’s initial extreme disability and the gradual return of functioning is both masterful and deeply moving.

It’s not possible to discuss this play without reference to recent events at Princeton University , where black students have protested the naming of various university units—including the prestigious Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs—after Princeton’s and the nation’s former president. Wilson supported racial segregation a hundred years ago, when that was Americans’ predominant view. Judging the past by the standards of the present is always problematic, and in this case ignores the tremendous good Wilson—deemed one of the nation’s greatest progressive presidents—contributed to social justice through expanded voter and worker rights and many other measures.

The Second Mrs. Wilson is on stage until November 29.

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

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Funny Thing, Two River

David Josefsberg, Michael Urie, Christopher Fitzgerald, & Kevin Isola in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum

Probably most families have movies and plays that are an immediate source of hilarity in the collective memory. My family does, and one of them is this 1962 musical currently re-mounted at Two River Theater in Red Bank, New Jersey, one of the Garden State’s fine regional theaters. With the book by Burt Shevelove and Larry Gelbart (M*A*S*H) and music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim, it’s exuberant, ridiculous farce from beginning to end. (The team of Shevelove and Gelbart is responsible for one of our other faves, too, the movie The Wrong Box.)

This was Sondheim’s early days, when his songs were more tuneful, and there are lovely duets (“Lovely”; “The Echo Song”) and showstopping ensemble numbers (“Everybody Ought to Have a Maid”; “Comedy Tonight”). Well, the last-mentioned would be a show-stopper if it weren’t the show-starter, and in the Two River production you know from that first moment, when the eight-member orchestra takes off, that you’re in for an exciting ride!

This production of A Funny Thing, directed by Jessica Stone, uses an all-male cast. She first tried this concept at the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 2010 to great acclaim, and it works well, injecting an extra layer of absurdity. This casting choice is historically accurate, actually, as the original comedies of the Roman playwright Plautus (c. 254-184 BCE)—A Funny Thing is very loosely based on one of them—relied on all-male casts. As in Shakespeare’s day, women weren’t allowed to play on stage. Plautus’s works included a number of stock characters, including the clever slave, the dumb beauty, the lustful old man, the braggart soldier—all of whom appear in A Funny Thing.

Except for the hero of the story—the extremely clever slave Pseudolus—cast members play multiple parts and appear to be having as much fun as the audience. They do a great job, and after such antic and energetic performances, they must need a serious nap or perhaps chiropracty. Christopher Fitzgerald is an irrepressible Pseudolus, Graham Rowat a superior Miles Gloriosus (“I am my ideal”), and I’ve never seen a better Philia than David Turner’s, as a young woman lightly touched with the awareness she’s a dimwit.

If you want some pure fun, don’t miss it! On stage until December 13.

Too far from New Jersey? Netflix (or try your local library) has the movie version, featuring Zero Mostel, Jack Gilford, Phil Silvers, and a very young Michael Crawford (who achieved super-stardom many years later as the lead in Phantom of the Opera), or order it below.

A Comedy of Tenors

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A Comedy of Tenors, Paris

Antoinette LaVecchia (Maria) and Bradley Dean (Tito)(photo: Roger Mastroianni. Courtesy, Cleveland Play House)

Ken Ludwig’s new play, A Comedy of Tenors is a good old-fashioned theatrical farce. “Three tenors. Three egos. One stage. What can possibly go wrong?” said the Cleveland Play House promotion. You may remember Ludwig’s big hit of 26 years ago—Lend Me a Tenor—and this one, too, involves amorous shenanigans with high-voltage opera stars, most of them the same characters who appeared in the earlier play.

A Comedy of Tenors premiered at the Cleveland Play House in September then moved to Princeton’s McCarter Theatre, which co-produced it and where it was on stage through November 1. The entire cast of seven moved with it, as did director Stephen Wadsworth, who has masterminded numerous notable McCarter plays over the past two decades. Wadsworth is well acquainted with the operatic temperament through his work with opera companies across Europe, at the Metropolitan Opera in New York, and as director of Opera Studies at the Julliard School. He doubtless has a natural affinity for this comedic material.

Set in 1930s Paris, the story centers on the final hours before a “three tenors”-style concert. But impresario Henry Saunders can’t seem to get his three singers in the same place at the same time. First, a Swedish tenor drops out altogether, but the biggest star of the bunch—Tito “Il Stupendo” Merelli—objects to the replacement Saunders is lucky to find. He’s a much younger man whose popularity is soaring, and Merelli is beginning to feel his age. Making matters worse are several romantic mixups that only a deft hand with comedy can carry off. The three singers finally come together, then fall apart again, and it appears the only man who can save Saunders’s concert is a bellhop with a golden voice.

The strikingly gorgeous set used in Cleveland—a luxury hotel suite—also made the trip to Princeton. As set designer Charlie Corcoran said in the program notes, “There’s one very specific need in all farces, and that is doors.” Doors to enter, doors to exit, and doors to slam. Lead actor Bradley Dean makes good use of those doors, as he plays both Merelli and the bellhop, and must exit the stage left door as Tito, dash around backstage (changing costume en route) and enter the door stage right as the bellhop. Watching him switch roles, costumes, and personae is one of the play’s great charms.

Ludwig’s Lend Me a Tenor is still playing all over the United States, and for theatergoers who love a romantic farce, his new play is something to watch for!

Song for the Disappeared

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Song for the Disappeared

Vivia Font & Christina Nieves in “Song for the Disappeared”

This new 90-minute play promised to dramatize several of my painful reads of the past year regarding the vulnerability of people caught, often through no fault of their own, in the ultra-violent wars of the Mexican narco-cartels. These issues have been painfully explored in both fiction (The Cartel) and non-fiction (Down by the River) exposés reviewed here.

Song for the Disappeared, by Tanya Saracho, probes the problem of fractured loyalties and the inability of even the wealthy to distance themselves from the consequences of operating within a totally broken system. The family patriarch is an honorable man, apparently, but his uprightness provides him and his family no protection; his recently returned daughter has pursued her literary aims, but only her naiveté allowed her to believe her novel about a narcotraficante family would be regarded as fiction; her ex-fiancé, now the father’s only trusted aide, has turned to religion for protection; and the father’s young wife, viewed by the others as a complete airhead, has her own demons.

When the play begins, the family heir Javier has disappeared. The family reunites at its remote Texas ranch, where everyone’s vulnerabilities are exposed, and no one is sure how to proceed or what will come next. Their struggles are symbolized in the actions of the younger daughter, slightly deranged and struggling to save the smallest and most vulnerable creatures she finds. Meanwhile, the wild dogs circle every more closely.

The all-Latino cast in the Passage Theatre production does a fine job. Even in Passage’s tiny venue, it is an engaging theatrical event, directed by Alex Correia. On stage until October 25.

Equivocation

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GunpowderPlot, quills

(artwork: Scott McKowen for STNJ)

Regrettably, this review comes after the run of Equivocation by award-winning playwright Bill Cain has ended at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey. Still, I hope you’ll watch for this sharply witty and thought-provoking play locally or, if you’re from the NJ-NY region, will take a good look at STNJ’s future offerings. They’re having a terrific season.

It’s 1606, King James I is on the English throne (one of the country’s Scottish kings), and he has written a story. Powerful Prime Minister Sir Robert Cecil asks Shag (Shakespeare) to turn the king’s story into a play, with the promise of considerable reward to the Globe theater company if he is successful, and, if he is not, well . . . best not dwell on the details.

The story deals with the very recent event known as The Gunpowder Plot, in which a group of Catholic men tunneled under Parliament, smuggled in 36 barrels of gunpowder, and would have blown up the king, his family, many notables, and the whole House of Lords on Parliament’s opening day. A mysterious letter alerts the king, and the plot is foiled. A man named Guy Fawkes is caught, and the plotters, whose names are gradually extracted via torture, are hideously murdered. Cecil knows a dramatization by Shag will fix the treasonous details about the powder plot in the memory of history.

While the theater company is overjoyed by the prospect of a royal commission, Shag resists writing about current-day events, especially as he comes to doubt the truth of the official version. The risks of being truthful are grimly evident, yet he won’t write a lie.

But what is a lie? The arrest of Father Henry Garnet, a Jesuit who wrote a book called Equivocation, brings this question to light. The priest asks his inquisitor, “If the king were in your house, and his enemies came to your door asking if he were there, would you say ‘yes’—and betray him—or would you say ‘no’—a lie?” Equivocation, the priest tells Shag, allows you to look at the question behind the question. And the real question in this instance is, “May I come in and kill the king?” And the answer is “no.” This is the key to resolving Shag’s struggle with the king’s powder plot story, too.

Cain’s play is deeply interesting historically, politically, religiously, theatricallly, and, as director Paul Mullins said in a post-show discussion, if you want to see it as current-day political allegory, “that’s OK, too.” At the same time it’s fast-moving, full of action, humor, and clever ripostes. Only six cast members play all the parts—many of them taking on 10 or more roles—and yet the staging was so expertly managed and so well acted that who they were playing was perfectly clear, moment to moment. This production had some shocking special effects too.

STNJ newcomers this year Matthew Stucky as Sharpe (a player, the King, plotter Wintour, etc.) and Dominic Comperatore as Nate (a player, Cecil, etc.), and long-time company utility infielder Kevin Isola as Armin (a player, a witch, states’ attorney, Lady Macbeth, etc.) deserve special mention, though all performances were strong.

Regarding The Gunpowder Plot, the program notes say, “The only thing we know with certainty about the event itself is that it could not possibly have occurred in the way the government claimed.” Accepted at face value for centuries, the government’s story has elicited more recent doubts, and even Parliament’s official website suggests the plot might have been the work of agents-provocateurs who wanted to discredit the Jesuits and cement the Protestant religion in the land.

Baby Doll–McCarter Theatre’s Season Opener

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Baby Doll, Tennessee Williams, McCarter Theatre

Hoffman and McDermott in Baby Doll

Perhaps Tennessee Williams and comedy don’t usually share your same mind-space, but here is a comedy-drama rather neglected in the back of his vast repository of work. Princeton’s McCarter Theatre (link includes a behind the scenes video) has found it, resurrected it, and mounted it in an exciting production on view through October 11.

The play, Baby Doll, was always a mashup. It began with two one-acts (“27 Wagons Full of Cotton” and one with a title something like “The Dinner Nobody Wanted”). It was turned into a script for a 1956 Elia Kazan movie starring Caroll Baker, Karl Malden, an Elie Wallach in his first movie role. That version went through many Kazan-initiated revisions and excited much Church opposition for its racy content—tame today compared to prime time tv. Williams later wrote a full-length stage play based on the screenplay, Tiger Tail, that had a short Broadway run in 1999. But generally, the project lay neglected.

Recently, it was retranslated and revived in France by Pierre Laville, and when McCarter’s Emily Mann read Laville’s version, she saw great potential. She and Laville share “adapted for the stage” credits, as further work had to be done by Mann to reflect American perspectives, particularly regarding race relations in Mississippi in the early 1950s. Miraculously, two weeks before rehearsals began, Mann discovered in Princeton University’s Firestone Library the original movie script by Williams, as he wrote it before Kazan’s “help.” More revisions ensued.

“Baby Doll” is a 19-year-old beauty, married to a much older man, Archie Lee Meighan and living in a falling-apart plantation house (handsome stage set). Baby Doll thought she was not “ready for marriage” at age 18. Although the wedding took place then, it is yet to be consummated (she still sleeps in her crib), according to the deal she, Archie Lee, and her father made before his death. The waiting—which is to end in two more days when Baby Doll turns 20—is driving Archie crazy. He both loves and lusts after her, feelings she does not return.

Archie Lee is nearly destitute, having lost his cotton gin business to the nearby Syndicate plantation, and Baby Doll is furious that the house’s furniture is repossessed. When the Syndicate’s gin is destroyed in a not-so-mysterious fire, the young plant manager, handsome Silva Vacarro, pays the Meighans a visit, bringing with him 27 wagons full of cotton for Archie’s gin. When Archie leaves to take care of the cotton, Silva—an Italian and exotic in those parts—tries to trick Baby Doll into revealing her husband’s role in the fire, and, as New York Times reviewer Charles Isherwood says, “we can practically see her little mind clicking along a few beats behind her tongue.”

The comedy in the play comes not from Neil Simon-style one-liners, but out of the human absurdities of normal, everyday action and impulse. In a post-show discussion, the actors said Mann insists they play their lines straight; playing for laughs would cheapen the effect. That earnestness is what makes the four characters—Baby Doll (Susannah Hoffman), Archie Lee (Robert Joy), Silva (Dylan McDermott), and Baby Doll’s Aunt Rose Comfort (Patricia Conolly)—so believable. While you’re chuckling, your heart is twisting. The play ends on a bit of a Scarlett O’Hara moment, with Baby Doll’s resolution to let tomorrow take care of itself.

Veteran actor Patricia Conolly talked about some of the similarities between the elderly, half-deaf, semi-oblivious maiden aunt she plays here and other Williams characters she’s portrayed. Such women live on the edges of family and society, and they must make enormous effort to “get along,” even with the most demanding hosts (“I have always depended on the kindness of strangers,” Blanche DuBois says.) Otherwise, as Aunt Rose Comfort puts the problem, they “have no place to go.” (Aunt Rose is a secondary character who manages to put a monkey wrench in situations fairly often, being where she shouldn’t be or not being where she should be. And, if you’ve ever had an elderly relative who’s become hard-of-hearing, you’ll know Williams got it right: she hears what she wants to hear!)

At only 90 minutes, Baby Doll is not as complex as Williams’s Big 3: Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Streetcar Named Desire, and The Glass Menagerie, but it’s well worth adding to your Williams experience.

Misalliance

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Ames Adamson, Misalliance, George Bernard Shaw

Ames Adamson as John Tarleton in Misalliance

This George Bernard Shaw play at the Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey (through August 30) provides some timely commentary for a work first produced 105 years ago. The feminist characters and viewpoints typical of Shaw don’t shock viewers today, as they did in an England just emerging from the Victorian era. But unexpectedly apt was Shaw’s skeptical take on the role of law enforcement. The play’s character Lord Summerhays, reflecting on his time as governor of Jenghiskahn, says:

Justice was not my business. . . . Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion . . . by force or fraud, or both. . . . It is as well that you should know this, my young friend; so that you may recognize in time that anarchism is a game at which the police can beat you.

In a talk-back after the show with STNJ artistic director Bonnie Monte and members of the cast, we learned the play was not well received in its 1910 debut and not produced again for several decades. One critic called it “a debating society of a lunatic asylum,” but it has proved more popular in recent years, perhaps because its structure seems less radical today. Audience members who’d seen other productions commented that this one is lighter and livelier. Farce isn’t the first word that comes to mind when thinking of Shaw, but this version of the play had a great many laugh lines, expertly delivered by the outstanding cast.

The story takes place over the course of a single afternoon in the country house conservatory of wealthy underwear magnate John Tarleton. His son Johnny is a bore, and his daughter Hypatia is engaged to a very unlikely fellow, son of dignified Lord Summerhays. Mrs. Tarleton seems a bit dim, but perhaps there are things she finds it more convenient not to see.

This loosely jelled assemblage is turned upside down by the sudden appearance of an airplane [!], flying low, that crashes into the family greenhouse. From the wreckage emerge the dashing pilot and his last-minute passenger, whom he assumes is another gentleman but who, when the leather cap and goggles come off, turns out to be a Polish woman, both dare-devil and fitness devotee. All relationships are up for grabs from that moment forward.

Numerous proposals of marriage (or less permanent liaisons) ensue, and some of them would rank high in misalliance potential. The pilot quotes one of his three stepfathers, an Anglican priest, with perhaps the play’s most famous line: “If marriages were made by putting all the men’s names into one sack and the women’s names into another, and having them taken out by a blind-folded child like lottery numbers, there would be just as high a percentage of happy marriages as we have now.”

Other misalliances emerge between parents and children, and about that relationship, Shaw says elsewhere, “If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson (which is not at all necessary), hold yourself up as a warning and not as an example.” This is advice amply illustrated by poor Mr. Tarleton and his daughter. “Depend on it,” he tells Lord Summerhays, “in a thousand years it’ll be considered bad form to know who your father and mother are.”

As always, the cast and production values are terrific, with special mention of Ames Adamson as John Tarleton and Erika Rolfsrud as his wife. At some point, a portable Turkish bath proves it’s more than an ornament.