Christopher Plummer generates star power as Caesar
STRATFORD, Ontario --Is there anything Christopher Plummer can't do?
Maybe walk on water, although I wouldn't be surprised to see the man skimming the surface of the Avon River that snakes through the heart of this bucolic town housing the largest repertory theater in North America.
Plummer is the obvious reason the Stratford Shakespeare Festival has expanded its theatrical horizons this season to include "Caesar and Cleopatra" by George Bernard Shaw, a playwright primarily showcased at that other picturesque temple of Canadian theater, the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake.
Long a star in the Stratford firmament, the Toronto-born, Quebec-raised Plummer has an innate rapport with the spoken word. He makes acting look and sound easy, the most natural thing in the world to stand center stage and declaim. Whether playing Clarence Darrow in "Inherit the Wind" on Broadway or Shaw's craggy, world-weary ruler of the Roman Empire, there is an accessibility to his performances that is enormously appealing.
"Caesar and Cleopatra" (in rep through Nov. 8) is a peculiar and, even for Shaw, a windy play. It's one that doesn't quite rank with such top-drawer efforts as "Major Barbara," "Pygmalion," "Man and Superman" and "Heartbreak House."
Fortunately, director Des McAnuff has nicely trimmed this revival and given it a glitzy, Technicolor production. You kind of expect Joan Collins and Jack Hawkins from Howard Hawks' "Land of the Pharaohs" to be floating around somewhere -- only with a little more intellectual heft. The vivid costumes are by Paul Tazewell and Robert Brill did the majestic, gold-encrusted settings, often dappled in shadows by Robert Thomson's evocative lighting.
McAnuff wisely keeps the focus primarily on the combative relationship between Caesar and the young queen of Egypt. Plummer's Caesar is a savvy old coot, a man cognizant of his advancing years yet filled with a paternal interest in the neophyte Egyptian ruler. It's the old story of practical teacher and impetuous pupil.
Much has been made of the similarities between "Caesar and Cleopatra" and "Pygmalion," in which Professor Henry Higgins transforms a Cockney flower girl into a genteel woman. "Pygmalion," of course, later gave birth to "My Fair Lady" while "Caesar and Cleopatra" wasn't as lucky in its musical-theater reincarnation. It was turned into the wildly unsuccessful "Her First Roman," starring Richard Kiley and Leslie Uggams, that had a two-week Broadway run in 1968.
After watching "Caesar and Cleopatra," you can see why the musical bombed. The play offers few opportunities for the characters to sing, although Nikki M. James probably could handle any song thrown at her. James, who was Dorothy in McAnuff's revival of "The Wiz" at California's La Jolla Playhouse, manages to hold her own against the formidable Plummer.
And she's a sterling example of how acting in rep can help a performer gain confidence. The actress seemed vocally pallid earlier this summer at Stratford in McAnuff's production of "Romeo and Juliet." No such problem here. Her delivery is robust and full of a spitfire.
With such intense focus on the two leads, it's hard for any of the supporting players to make much of an impression. The one exception is Steven Sutcliffe as Britannus, Caesar's very proper, incongruously British secretary. Shaw, with malicious glee, takes aim at every English stereotype, and Sutcliffe (loved his carefully coifed, Oscar Wilde hairdo) encompasses them with unerring and hilarious accuracy.
One of the problems with "Caesar and Cleopatra" is that its best scene -- the first meeting of the title characters before a moonlit Sphinx -- comes right at the top of the play. There's a playfulness to their dialogue, an almost banter on Caesar's part and a childlike inquisitiveness from Cleopatra.
Nothing else in the evening quite matches their initial interaction. The play gets bogged down in Egyptian and Roman politics as well as chatter about the moral and practical obligations of being a ruler. Yet with Plummer's golden tones detailing Shaw's thoughts on these subjects, the discussion becomes an invigorating theatrical sermon by an extraordinary actor.
"Caesar and Cleopatra" wasn't the only mid-August opening at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival, which began its season back in April and included more than a dozen productions. The other two new ones: an adaptation of "Moby-Dick" by Morris Panych and the world premiere of "Palmer Park" by Joanna McClelland Glass.
It may have been foolhardy for Panych to try and compress Herman Melville's gargantuan novel into a nearly two-hour performance piece that is more dance than theater. Make than more movement than dance, performed to swirling, fraught-with-anxiety melodies by Claude Debussy.
Melville's words are kept to a minimum, almost incomprehensible voiceover snippets of observation by Shaun Smyth, who portrays Ishmael, the novel's narrator. Despite the necessary condensation, there are some striking images in the piece, seen at the festival's small, 200-seat Studio Theatre (through Oct. 18).
Panych, one of Canada's most celebrated dramatists, is working here with what is called in the theater program "creative associates": Wendy Gorling for movement and Shaun Amyot for choreography. And, yes, there are some stunning visual moments -- particularly one in which Captain Ahab's ship, the Pequod, comes to life, using only a couple of ladders and the flowing white shirts of the company to create its billowing sails.
But despite this inventiveness, the piece remains sketchy, unable to get much beyond these striking pictures. Melville's mammoth tale has been reduced to an outline, the barest of summaries on which some theatrical images have been hung.
Theatricality is what's missing in Stratford's third August production, Glass' "Palmer Park" (playing through Sept. 21). It's a tale of white flight from an upper middle-class section of Detroit known as Palmer Park after the riots of 1967.
At times, "Palmer Park" has the earnestness of a classroom lecture. For much of the evening, its story is told directly to the audience. The large cast -- 10 actors play 13 roles -- plow their way through facts and figures about the city and its history as well as rattle off significant cultural and political highlights of the era.
What gradually emerges is the story of two married couples -- one white, the other black -- who refuse to flee and instead stay to fight for their neighborhood and the school their daughters attend. Eventually, their efforts are overwhelmed.
There's a poignant quality to "Palmer Park" that crystalizes in the second half of the evening, when Glass finally allows several of her characters to become people and not just reciters of their own resumes. Paradise has been lost and the dreams of integration die with a mournful realization that life will never be the same.
So much information has been packed into Glass' play that it is hard for individual actors to make much of an impression, which is unusual for Stratford. One of the joys of the festival is seeing its large contingent of actors in a variety of roles, both large and supporting.
Stratford's long season ends in November, so there is time to catch some outstanding performances. Check the theater's performance schedule, but among the portraits still on stage to be savored are:
--Martha Henry as a fierce, defiant Hecuba in an affecting version of "The Trojan Women."
--Evan Buliung as a lustily unapologetic Petruchio in "The Taming of the Shrew."
--Stephen Ouimette as the harried father of two eligible daughters in that same "Shrew."
--Geraint Wyn Davies as a most sympathetic Polonius in "Hamlet."
--Bruce Dow as the naughty master of ceremonies in a delightfully decadent "Cabaret."
--Sean Arbuckle as a front-row observer of all that debauchery in "Cabaret."
--Leah Oster as a spirited Marian the librarian in "The Music Man."
Plummer may the big gun at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival this year but he is acting in remarkably good company.
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