George Bernard Shaw made his stage debut with this play and, despite his efforts to hype it up in the various media to which he had access in London at the time, it was not a success. Not many productions of it have been seen since, and the reason is not hard to find. It is a clumsy polemic which sacrifices its characters to Shaw's twin messages: that London theatre of the time needed to be shaken out of its formulaic romantic constructions, and that there was rampant cruelty and corruption among the monied classes.
Fiona Shaw's vigorous and inventive direction has taken the polemic by its throat and, in Peter McKintosh's elemental setting, drawn brilliantly and carefully exaggerated performances from her talented cast. In playing everything just over the top (none of your Shavian "realism" here) the company from Britain's Royal National Theatre's mobile productions hits home, with shades of Stephen Berkoff's Decadence hovering around them, against a society based on extortion and what has become familiar here in the Flood Tribunal as the plain brown envelope. A clumsy play becomes gripping, exciting, highly relevant melodrama for today.
Wale Ojo is the smooth-as-insincerity Cokane, Jonathan Slinger the frazzled Harry. Emma Bernbach is the deeply troubled Blanche, Pip Donaghy her ambitious, unscrupulous, Irish-accented father. Gary Sefton's Lickcheese oozes venality, while Mark Bousie counterpoints every theatrical exaggeration perfectly on his accordion with Gary Yershon's music and Lorraine Stanley in the emotionally indentured chambermaid. None of the characters is pleasant, yet they provide compelling theatre, almost despite the author.
Seen in Letterkenny's strikingly good new An Grianan Theatre, the show can, and should, be seen tonight and tomorrow in the Ardhowen in Enniskillen. It is on a tour of England and the Channel Islands thereafter, and will be back in the Cottesloe in London briefly in January and February. Irish theatre managements please note: it would merit an extended season here.
Ardhowen Theatre, Enniskillen: telephone 08 01 365325
