Theatre Review

Kiltartan Comedies

By: Lady Augusta Gregory

Directed By: Micheline Chevier

Shaw Festival of Canada

www.shawfest.com

2007 Season

Niagara-On-The-Lake

Festival Theatre

3 ½ Stars

Reviewed By: Kindah Mardam Bey

A contemporary of George Bernard Shaw and fellow Irishman William Butler Yeats, Lady Augusta Gregory started her illustrious writing career in her fifties. She was widowed and shortly after took up the pen to write more than forty plays. Lady Augusta Gregory seemed a feisty passionate woman, and particularly towards her Irish homeland. The Kiltartan Comedies are a series of vignettes about the Irish experience, and two are showcased at the Shaw Festival Of Canada this 2007 season. Seeing as Gregory was a playwright during Shaw’s life, and well respected within theatre circles, her work seems worth opening up and showcasing. By far the shortest theatre experience at the Shaw festival, the show runs for just under an hour, and is smartly slotted as an 11:30am performance. This is an ideal production as it is ‘short and sweet,’ just after the tourist’s breakfast, but before the first matinee; it’s like a sherry before dinner in many ways.

Ten minutes prior to the production starting, actor Patrick McManus comes to the stage and lays languidly on a piece of set; no one takes note at first until McManus breaks out into a tragic Irish ballad. All of a sudden, the audience is hushed and lulled.

The first vignette is called ‘The Rising Of The Moon’ and it is about a wanted man and the Sergeant after him. Two men sit on a barrel, the Sergeant and a traveling man selling sheet music, and they keep look out on the dock for the criminal. They talk about how life would have been different for the both of them if one had more misfortunes and the other less. How life is a series of sequences and choices that brings us to grace or to ruin. Lady Augusta Gregory explores a key theme in Irish tradition, one of redemption and circumstance.

In the second vignette ‘Spreading The News’ a community of gossiping busy-bodies creates a plot of diabolical proportions based on speculation and miscommunications. One man loves another man’s wife and seeks to steal her away one night, but her husband discovers the plan and kills the other man with a pitchfork. The stories are paramount and the facts are few. A deaf woman in the community perpetuates the gossiping as she gets only half conversations, but fills in the blanks at will. This is a hilarious account of small town conversation throughout history and the world over!

Both vignettes have strong ‘Irish themes’ and end with patriotism at its best (even if you aren’t Irish, you’ll feel patriotic about the Irish at the end of the show!). Sadly the Irish accent is a hard one to conquer, but somehow everyone feels they have the capability; in this production the accents were off the mark as per usual, but the cast did try to do their best. Patrick McManus and Douglas E Hughes play well off each other in ‘The Rising Of The Moon’ and Saint Joan’s Tara Rosling as Mrs. Fallon in the second vignette is incandescent.

I believe that The Kiltartan Comedies will hit the right chord nicely as it is a mid-morning, light-hearted romp through the lush green landscape of Ireland. Such smaller productions prior to lengthy matinees and evening shows would be a perfect feature for any theatre festival or company to include in their season. The Kiltartan Comedies is a refreshing and pleasant idea for the theatre experience.