THEATRE REVIEW: JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND
12 Jul'10

Fine acting makes 'Island' a treasure

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 4.5 out of 5

NIAGARA-ON-THE LAKE — Although we can always dream, it remains highly unlikely that there will ever be a moratorium on plays that present the Irish as a romantic breed of charming, child-like drunks, victimized by unfeeling history.

Still, for those of us who've become heartily sick of the clichéd vision of debauched leprechauns that has been trotted out over the years to 'speak for Ireland', there's no small comfort in the fact that the Shaw Festival is prepared, every decade or so, to serve up a new production of Bernard Shaw's JOHN BULL'S OTHER ISLAND — a play in which Ireland's venerable man of letters not only confronts the clichéd stereotypes but uses them to underscore the very real problems a subjugated Ireland faced.

The John Bull of title, of course, is not a character in the play, but rather the collective face of a nation, serving to humanize Britain in the same way Johnny Canuck represents Canada, or Uncle Sam, the U.S.A. But while he is a character in the play, one could say that Tom Broadbent, an English entrepreneur with his eye on Ireland, is more or less possessed by John Bull's spirit when he sets off to visit the 'other island' of title, that being Ireland, of course.

As played by Benedict Campbell, on the Court House stage, Broadbent is the epitome of English self-satisfaction, convinced there is not a single problem on the face of this earth — Ireland included — that can't be solved by a combining his own genius with the British love of order and good government.

His business partner, Larry Doyle (played by Graeme Somerville) is somewhat less convinced, however. Born and raised in Ireland, he has forsaken her shores for a life in London, and while he values all things British, he looks at his homeland through the eyes of a pragmatist and not those of a romantic.

Together, the partners forsake London and head for back-country Ireland, where they are soon caught up in the very life Doyle left behind — a life that includes not only Nora Reilly (Severn Thompson) the woman who's waited for Doyle's return, but an entire cast of drunks and miscreants. But where Doyle sees everything as a mere continuation of the life he once knew and chose to abandon, Broadbent is not only charmed by it, but excited, seeing in Ireland's poverty and internecine political battles, a chance to secure not only a personal fortune but a future in politics as well.

Under the quietly assured direction of Christopher Newton, a strong ensemble tackles the thorny issues that long plagued the troubled and enforced union of England and Ireland, examining in the process the price paid by both sides over the centuries. Reviewed here in preview, this production also showcases uniformly fine work from Jim Mezon, Guy Bannerman, Mary Haney, Thom Marriott, David Schumann, Jonathan Widdifield, Patrick McManus and others.

Working with a simple but beautifully effective set created by William Schmuck and lit by Louise Guinand, Newton combines fine acting and carefully chosen incidental music to great effect, using Somerville's clean, crisp, no-nonsense acting style as an effective anodyne to Campbell's more richly unctuous approach, and scoring an impressive range of amusement along the way.

But, finally, this is still Shaw, and not even Newton and his impressive cast can keep the ball bouncing for the full 165-minute duration. In the final scenes, with Campbell and Mezon pouring their finest thespian tones over Shaw's dialogue like clotted cream on strawberry preserves, the arteries of Shaw's genius simply close up and the play dies a quick and merciful death. And happily, Shaw once again manages to say a lot before he says way too much.