The Circle

By: Somerset Maugham

Directed By: Neil Munro

At: The Shaw Festival Of Canada

Website: www.shawfest.com

2007 Season

Location: Niagara-On-The-Lake

Theatre: Royal George Theatre

4 Stars

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey

I have recently become enamoured with Somerset Maugham. Perhaps a little behind in my British authors of great significance to history, I found Maugham through the current adaptation of his novel The Painted Veil committed to screen for another retelling by Edward Norton and Naomi Watts. The film was a refreshing take on a love story and I was struck at how much more interesting the tale might be to read; I then made the connection that Maugham is also the author of the classic Of Human Bondage, another book on my ‘must read’ list. So timely (in my life anyways!) was it that the Shaw Festival of Canada was so politely showcasing Maugham in this much praised and talked about production of The Circle. Both a novelist and playwright, Maugham’s talents were varied; so much so that the likes of Alfred Hitchcock considered Maugham the only decent writer he enjoyed reading.

Awaiting this production with abated breath, I surveyed the set of its 1920s décor. Elegance was prominent, with soft colourings and tidy detailing such as soup terrains in alcove walls, ginger pots on fireplace mantles, French doors, lots of pluming flower arrangements and a rather significant chair to the plays plot sequestered stage left.

The Circle represents the repetitiveness of life; we enter the plot when Arnold’s wife Elizabeth invites his estranged Mother to their summer home for a visit. The couple believed Clive, who is Arnolds’ father would be away to bypass any discomfort of the situation. You see, thirty years ago Catherine, Arnold’s estranged Mother abandoned her husband and son to run away with her husband’s best friend Lord Porteous. Even thirty years later may not have dulled the intensity of this situation! Arnold, a fastidiously correct self-conscious man is desperate to make a connection with his Mother while keeping her at arm’s length, Elizabeth is enamoured by the infamous Lady Catherine and Clive just so happens to arrive at the most awfully timed moment. Elizabeth and Arnold’s friends, Anna and Edward (Teddie), have been invited for the weekend to release the tensions of the situation at hand. As the older generation reopen old wounds, live with the regrets and consequences of their past actions, and squabble like teenagers, we discover that Teddie is madly passionate about Elizabeth, and could quite possibly induce the same family tragedy thirty years later to Arnold’s delicate balance. Of course the hopeless victim twice around would be Arnold, left by both his Mother and his wife under the same circumstances within a thirty year span.

Will the circle continue? Can a chain of events be broken? Maugham answers these questions to the initial audiences sha-grin as the play was booed and hissed at for the premiere in 1921. Quite often things that are ground breaking and inventive have been stamped with disapproval and rebuke - just ask fellow Aquarian Galileo about the damning consequences of forward thinking.

What this particular production has to offer is a dynamic and solid cast of actors that have taken this play for its subtle nuances and blown them up for the scrutiny of the microscopic eye. Among a plethora of solid performances the three-way love triangle of Clive (David Schurmann), Catherine (Wendy Thatcher) and her lover turned bitter-pill Lord Porteous (Michael Ball) is a vibrant and bolshy correlation of constellations. Each man pitted against each other and his own inner demons, while vacuous and spoiled Catherine, performed to perfection by Thatcher, dangles her flirtations wherever she can get a little interest.

On the younger generation of The Circle, perhaps seemingly unable to outshine their predecessors, somehow Arnold (David Jansen), Elizabeth (Moya O ‘Connell) and Teddie (Gray Powell) managed to put in an equally cohesive but somewhat more evolved performance of their own love triangle. Moya O’Connell was stunning in both stature and performance, Gray Powell as Teddie had a definitive Cary Grant persona about him making it easy to believe his allure to Elizabeth, and possibly the greatest performance was handed in my David Jansen as the easy-to-empathize with Arnold. Jansen stuck to the tidy-life shield Arnold created for himself that should not crumble even under dire circumstances. Even when Jansen showcases Arnold’s affections for Elizabeth, it is still tightly reined in under a belt of self-criticism – beautifully conceptualized and performed.

The Circle was a little slow to get started with, but revved up amply as the play carried on. Tensions were broken with humour, and particularly by the ‘butlers’ who silently tarried on slapstick humour amidst penguin tails and white gloves. The Circle was much more of a departure in theme and perspective from The Painted Veil; but I found the quality and substance of storytelling equal in both of Maugham’s scripts.