In some ways, You Never Can Tell is one of Shaw's most conventional plays. It thrives on the devices of nineteenth century romantic comedy -- the confused identities, the missing persons rediscovered, the peculiarly crossed wires of relations between the middle class and the servant class, and so on. But underneath all that are other and more unusual elements already visible, elements which were destined to come to fullness in succeeding works.
One of the unusual elements is the setting. Instead of the conventional drawing room location so beloved of all his contemporaries, Shaw opens up the atmosphere by locating this play in a seaside resort, at the "Marine Hotel" -- a typical seaside-resort-hotel name of the period. These resorts were the ideal getaway for the Victorians of all classes except the very wealthiest (who did the Grand Tour of Europe instead), with different resorts catering to people of different economic stature. So Shaw manages at the same time to respect and subvert the conventions of his day, a trick which he was destined to raise to an art form in its own right.
You Never Can Tell is one of a group of plays published in a volume entitled Plays Pleasant -- a successor to the original Plays Unpleasant which had posed such a forceful challenge to social mores in the established theatre around the end of the nineteenth century. With You Never Can Tell, Shaw determined to write a commercially successful play without sacrificing his socialist and modernist principles. It was first performed in 1897.
Lighthearted this play may be, yet it is truly Shavian in its continual reversals of conventional expectations. Consider as an example the relationship which develops between Valentine, the self-described "duellist of sex", and the deadly-serious "new woman", Gloria. At first glance, a most unlikely couple. And yet, in the end, this proves to be the first and one of the funniest of Shaw's numerous stage relationships in which (as John Tanner later would remark in Man and Superman): "Woman is the pursuer and the disposer; man, the pursued and the disposed of."
But it's easy to get distracted from the prototypical Shaw relationship so presented when you are confronted with the sometimes-ineffectual "modern" blusterings of Mrs. Clandon, the breezy antics of the young twins Dolly and Philip, and the delightful philosophic musings of the waiter, one of the prize comic roles of the entire Shavian canon.
The play interests me in another way -- namely, that I find it impossible to discern a single character who is Shaw's mouthpiece for his own views (Tanner again being an obvious example). Instead, the Shavian lessons are spread across several different people from time to time, a fact which reduces the tendency Shaw displayed in others of his early plays to forget the theatre and slide back into socio-political pamphleteering.
So, to the current production, which is the Shaw Festival's seventh staging of the play. In this production, designer Leslie Frankish has made the most of the confined stage space of the Royal George Theatre by suggesting expanses of space in front of the stage (i.e. in the auditorium). The terrace scene features a staircase down to the beach (running down into the underworld right across the front of the stage), with the implication that the beach is out where the audience happens to be sitting. Another useful and sensible trick is to place the dentist's chair of the first act on a small rolling platform which can simply be wheeled off stage to reveal the set for Act 2. The final scene at the masquerade ball uses brilliant colours to suggest the festive atmosphere.
Director Jim Mezon has nudged and steered the company into one of the strongest ensemble performances I've seen at the Shaw -- no mean achievement when this company is renowned for its strength of ensemble playing! Not least of his achievements is the avoidance of some of the excesses of "acting" suggested by Shaw's prolific stage directions in favour of a purely natural, human-scaled manner for all of the characters.
The effortlessly charming Valentine is played by Gray Powell with an understated air of Don Juan about him. The understatement totally suits the character but also suits the overall tone of the play. His one over-the-top moment comes when Gloria is first ushered into his room and he completely loses it and stands staring at her with his mouth hanging open. The contrast is both striking and hilarious.
Gloria, the young woman of icy self-control and formidable intellect, comes across powerfully as presented by Julia Course. Indeed, "icy" and "formidable" are the perfect descriptive words for her entire performance, until the final scene when the thaw sets in -- not swiftly but at a believably human pace.
Her mother, Mrs. Lanfrey Clandon (we are never told the origin of this intriguing name), is a character type found from time to time in Shaw's works: a person who was advanced in her day but has now been left far behind by the march of "progress". In her case, the excuse is that she has been living in Madeira with her children for 18 years. Although by nature a woman of considerable force of character, she simply cannot stand up to her children. This is a complex and tricky role to bring off, and Tara Rosling is definitely the person to do it. Particularly appealing in her performance is the perennial air of being thrown off balance by everything that happens. Rosling plays her ongoing sense of discomfiture very effectively, as a subtle undertone to everything that she says and does.
Patrick McManus strongly presents the growling, fuming Fergus Crampton (Mrs. Clandon's long-separated husband). From his first appearance in Valentine's dentist chair he exactly treads the line between appealing and maddening -- and this balancing act is the essence of the character. A fine performance indeed.
Peter Krantz turns in a well-nigh perfect portrayal of Finch M'Comas, the family solicitor -- the very epitome of the man who is constantly pushed, pulled, bullied and buffeted by everyone around him. He protests mightily (Krantz's deep, big voice here put to great use) but to absolutely no avail.
Bohun, a lawyer who appears as a kind of deus ex machina in the final act to sort out all the confusions and resolve all the questions, has to be imposing. Even without Shaw's stage directions, the mere lines of the part make that very clear. His job is to put every other character in his or her place, as often as necessary. At one key moment, when four people all begin talking at once, he simply shuts them up by saying, "One moment." Of course, this has to be done in a very commanding tone! (Shaw's stage direction here is "Thunderously.")
I wasn't at all sure that Jeff Meadows was the man for the role, as I'd only seen him hitherto in rather more affable parts. But no fear. He dominated the stage effortlessly, throughout the scene, and his voice drowned out the other four with no trouble at all -- and with no artificial amplification either, thank goodness!
Now, all of this is very well and good as far as it goes. But this play absolutely stands or falls by the performances of the three remaining principal characters. All three of them were simply magnificent.
Jennifer Dzialoszynski was flippant, voluble, inquisitive and high-spirited as Dolly, the younger Clandon daughter. Her partner in crime, her twin brother Philip, was played with equal flippancy, energy and high spirits by Stephen Jackman-Torkoff. These two aren't meant to be two of a kind at all. Rather, they share between them an intriguing range of characteristics -- Dolly the more childlike and manipulative, Philip the more self-possessed and mock-pompous. It's easy to take these two characters and push them right over the top, but here more than anywhere else was where the human scale of the performance as a whole paid enormous dividends. The twins were full of life and energy, but always believable and very lovable human beings -- never did they descend into comic caricature.
And finally, the presiding genius of the Marine Hotel, William the waiter. Out of all Shaw's characters, this is the one I would want to play myself. He's an absolutely delightful man: warm-hearted, philosophical, funny, observant, and thoughtful. He goes far beyond mere waiterly skills in making his hotel a friendly, comfortable, sane environment for everyone. As I said earlier, an absolute prize of a comic role.
Peter Millard crowned this show with a wonderful assumption of the role of William, full of little nuances of speech and grace notes of physical mannerism and facial expression. It would be useless to try to single out particular moments in such a consistently and fully realized portrayal.
Really, that could stand as my reaction to the show as a whole. Of the three times I have seen this play staged, I felt this was by far the most accomplished, the most enjoyable, and certainly the most uniformly excellent.
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