Brendan Rowe
Contributor
The Shaw Festival runs every summer at Niagara-on-the-Lake, a thriving highlight of a town that celebrates its heritage and culture. The festival, named after Irish writer George Bernard Shaw, enters its 50th season this year.
In this anniversary season, the company returns to its roots, performing three Shaw plays, including Candida, the first play ever performed at the festival, and My Fair Lady, a musical adapted from the Shaw play Pygmalion.
An interesting selection in the festival lineup is Drama at Inish—A Comedy. Written in the 1930s by Irish playwright Lennox Robinson, the play tells the story of a small coastal town in Ireland called Inish. The characters in the play are the residents, transitioning from small townies who love watching circuses and outdoor entertainment to high art aficionados watching plays by Chekov and Ibsen.
The introduction of the De La Mare Repertory Company sets the town afire and gets all the citizens thinking about life, love, and the choices we make. With each passing day the town residents get more and more withdrawn and suspicious of one another. There is a series of accidents and odd happenings, and the town almost implodes upon itself with the melancholy of life.
Drama at Inish sits back and examines the meaning of art in offhand ways, as its characters butt heads and philosophies with both the people who frequent their new brand of theatre and the actors themselves, who are living at the hotel that the main characters own and operate. Inish is theatre meta-criticism at its best, using medium to explore medium, and the effect it has on its audience both within and without the play.
As much as it deals with serious issues of art and the human condition, Inish is in essence a comedy, delivering jokes and quips that poke fun at both life in a small town and the over-dramatics of serious artists like those in the De La Mare Repertory Company. Drama at Inish is a wonderfully playful romp through exploring art and its effect on society.
The Shaw Festival also includes two Pulitzer Prize-winning plays, Tennessee Williams’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof; Suzan-Lori Parks’ Topdog/Underdog; Ferenc Molnár’s one-act The President; a new musical called Maria Severa; The Admirable Crichton by J.M. Barrie, author of Peter Pan; and the festival’s first play from Australia, When the Rain Stops Falling.
The 50th season runs until mid-October with daily matinées and evening performances that cycle throughout the week. There is a play for everyone and a visit to the beautiful village of Niagara-on-the-Lake would do anyone good. So take in some scenery and some excellent theatre—there’s nothing else like it.
