London Assurance At The Stratford Festival
Antoni Cimolino is perhaps the most gifted interpreter of William Shakespeare in North America. So when I saw that he was directing none of the Bard’s works this season at the Stratford Festival, I consoled myself with the knowledge that at least he would be directing London Assurance, the too-much-neglected 1841 masterpiece by Irish and later American playwright Dion Boucicault.
It pains me to have to report that I found the London Assurance now playing on the Festival’s mainstage a bit of disappointment. Mind you, it’s well worth seeing and has many virtues, but I felt it could have been, should have been so much better.
London Assurance tells the story of an aging and foppish roué, Sir Harcourt Courtly (Geraint Wyn Davies) who plans to marry Grace (Marissa Orjalo), the 18-year-old niece of his old friend, country squire Max Harkaway (David Collins). Meanwhile, his wastrel son, Charles (Austin Eckert) is wasting away his youth in the bad company of people like the opportunistic Dazzle (Emilio Viera).
When the action moves to Max Harkaway’s country estate, Charles meets Grace and Sir Harcourt meets Lady Gay Spanker (Deborah Hay), a free-spirited force of nature who rides to hounds. Sparks fly and a veritable bonfire of merriment is ignited.
London Assurance is a comedy of manners in a tradition that stretches back to the early Restoration period culminating in the comedies of Sheridan, Goldsmith, and Farquhar, which the program goes to great lengths to point out. If only it had been played that way.
There is a fair amount of talk these days about “culturally specific” plays. London Assurance, I suggest, is one of them. However, the cultural specifics in the current production are rather schizophrenic. Some characters sport more or less authentic English accents while the rest seem to hail from various Canadian provinces.
Much of the fun of London Assurance depends on the contrast between the folkways of country life and the pretensions of the metropolis, a comic trope that dates back to Wycherley’s The Country Wife of 1675. The proper deployment of accents would have helped to make that distinction clearer.
It’s also a play about class. The Irish Rep production of 2019 made the wise decision to return to Boucicault’s original conception of the duplicitous Dazzle as an Irish con man who talks posh to mooch off the aristocracy. That opportunity is lost in the Festival production.
I’m also not quite sure that Boucicault intended for Sir Harcourt to be quite as effeminate as he is portrayed. The character’s own words and actions reveal him to be quite the randy hetero. It’s only in relatively recent history that extravagant attire in men has been equated with playing for the other team. Remember, too, that many perfectly manly contemporary heterosexuals wear makeup (see also, Donald Trump).
Material like this demands a very specific style of acting. Cimolino’s productions of School for Scandal and The Beaux’ Stratagem handled it beautifully. Alas, the style of London Assurance is just as random as the accents, although fortunately most of the key roles get it right.
The small print in the programme reveals that Richard Bean of One Man, Two Guvnors fame, provided “additional text,” which tends to explain the emphasis on the plot’s more farcical elements. If you find jokes like “My wife eloped with my best friend . . . and I miss him,” surprisingly modern that’s because they are.
In Cimolino’s defense, Boucicault’s text has been constantly diddled with, by director Richard Eyre at the RSC in 1974 and by Bean in 2010. The English have a long and proud history of improving upon the cultural artifacts of the races they conquered to cobble together the so-called United Kingdom. And much as it galls me to admit it, many of Bean’s additions are quite good.
Given the frequent use of short asides and slightly longer speeches taken directly to the audience, it occurred to me that London Assurance might have worked better on the Avon’s proscenium stage. Ditto for the party scene with its dancing.
Despite all the foregoing bitching and moaning, Cimolino’s London Assurance can be very, very entertaining, especially once the deliciously named Lady Gay Spanker is introduced. It has been said that she is one of the greatest comic creations of the Anglophone theatre and Deborah Hay brings her to delightfully delirious life. As Sir Harcourt himself observes, she’s a “devilish fine woman.”
At the performance I saw both Geraint Wyn Davies and David Collins were out, replaced by John Kirkpatrick as Sir Harcourt and Brad Hodder as Max Harkaway.
I have long felt that Kirkpatrick is one of the Festival’s most underused assets, so it was a treat to see him tackle a major role with such Stratford assurance. He lacks the corpulence that is traditionally associated with the role, but no matter. He carries it off beautifully. Hodder struck just the right note as country squire Harkaway.
Other notable contributions come from the petite Marissa Orjalo as Grace Harkaway; Rylan Wilkie as Cool, Sir Harcourt’s harried, harassed, and imperturbable butler; and Michael Spencer-Davis as the meek Adolphus “Dolly” Spanker, who gains a spine when he mixes burgundy and brandy punch.
Perhaps the one purely unalloyed triumph in London Assurance is the costumes by Francesca Callow. True to the period, they are sumptuous when called for and gritty when necessary. Sir Harcourt’s Act Two ensemble (a different one for Kirkpatrick than the one Wyn Davies sports) made me want to take up foppery!
Please don’t let my annoying nitpicking dissuade you from catching London Assurance. We don’t always get a chance to see Boucicault’s masterpiece so seize the opportunity. I have already booked another ticket.
London Assurance continues at the Stratford Festival through October 25, 2024. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the Stratford Festival website.
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