One For The Pot At The Shaw Festival
What to say about One For The Pot now at the Festival Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake other than “WTF!?”
One For The Pot by Ray Cooney and Tony Hilton is one of the famous “Whitehall farces” that ruled the London stage in the 1950s and 60s. (Neil Barclay’s informative article on that history in the programme is well worth reading.)
The convoluted plot revolves around an intended bequest of £10,000 by Jonathan Hardcastle (Peter Galligan) to his late business partner’s long-lost, dim-witted son, Billy Hickory Wood (Peter Fernandes) as long as he can prove he is his father’s sole surviving heir.
That proves difficult as more and more Hickory Woods keep popping up. It would appear that the late Mr. Hickory Wood sired identical triplets.
The fun of the piece is that these doppelgangers are played by the same actor, who must be an extremely gifted and versatile farceur. Fernandes, who scored mightily in Shaw’s production of One Man, Two Guvnors, would surely seem to fill the bill.
I arrived with high expectations, having seen a wonderful production at Drayton Entertainment’s Huron Country Playhouse in 2017. My hopes were dashed. I didn’t review that one, but the estimable Christopher Hoile of stage-door.com did and I refer you to him for a glimpse of what might have been.
Director Chris Abraham, who elsewhere has shown himself to be a superb director of high comedy, goes completely off the rails with this one. He seems to have been inspired by the ghastly string of “The Play That Goes Wrong” excrescences that very quickly veer from the funny to the just plain stupid.
Abraham has clearly encouraged his cast to go to infinity and beyond on the goofiness scale. And, God bless ‘em, his talented cast delivers. At times the level of hamminess reached such dizzying heights that I fully expected to see waves of red-eye gravy wash across the stage.
There are a few genuinely funny moments when the farce remains firmly rooted in some semblance of reality, but for most of the play I sat in stony silence. Honesty compels me to note that the packed house with whom I saw the show had a distinctly different reaction. (Although the person seated to my left didn’t return after intermission.)
So rather than continue to bitch and moan, let me just mention some of the things I liked about the production. It will make for a shorter list.
My favourite thing about the show isn’t in the play at all. It is the soundtrack of vintage English music hall numbers compiled by sound designer Thomas Ryder Payne that played before the show and during intermission. I found it vastly entertaining.
The massive, sumptuously appointed set by Michael Gianfrancesco is a minor masterpiece of overdone detailing. If only his skills (and budget) had been lavished on Heartbreak House!
Martin Happer, who is in his 21st season with Shaw and hence not exactly in the first blush of youth, is in superb physical shape. I’ve seen a lot of him at Shaw over the years and I saw a lot more of him in One For The Pot.
At the risk of seeming overcritical, this One For The Pot is overdone, overwrought, overplayed, overloaded, and over the top. I couldn’t wait for it to be over.
One For The Pot continues at the Shaw Festival through October 11, 2026. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the Shaw Festival website.
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