‘One of Stratford’s best shows this year’
IN ITS SHEER CONSISTENCY OF PERFORMANCE, MADWOMAN SHINES
Arthur Miller, writing in the 1950s, described Jean Giraudoux’s The Madwoman of Chaillot, written in the 1940s, as “the most radical play I ever saw, the most open indictment of private exploitation of the earth I know about.” To see it now is to be surprised and refreshed. Here, after all the productions that have huffed and puffed and tied themselves in knots trying to squeeze in allusions to Donald Trump, is a play that without any directorial forcing proves astonishingly prescient of the present moment.
It’s a play in which greed condemns itself out of its own mouth: at length but exhilaratingly so, thanks to Giraudoux’s flair, and that of his new translator David Edney. The Stratford actors relish in delivering his satirical set speeches.
Chaillot is a district of Paris and the play’s first act is set in a café there. At one of the tables sits the President of a company. Without any particular prompting and illumined by a spotlight, he launches into a monologue about how he manipulates the stock market and, by extension, the world. He’s joined by the Baron, who’s willing to lend his name and title to any board that will make it worth his while, and by the Broker, who looks after the nuts and bolts; they similarly soliloquize. All that disturbs them is the disapproving presence of other less prosperous patrons — street musicians and shoelace sell- ers and such. They’re a mocking, colourful bunch and the President wants them removed from the premises. He is informed, however, that this is not possible.
He and his team are joined by the Prospector, who has a dazzling new scheme for them; his infallible nose has detected oil beneath the pavements of Paris. The company will need to get permits to destroy the district and start digging, but they don’t foresee any difficulty there.
Enter Aurelie. the madwoman of the title who isn’t actually mad; she’s an octogenarian eccentric who likes to be called the Countess and whose initially silent stare the wheelers and dealers find particularly unnerving. Aurelie has a touching belief in the world’s innocence, but once the café people have disabused her of this and told her what is going on, she springs into action. She will lure the predators to her apartment with the promise of further riches and wall them up in a vault she happens to have handy. It works.
This is not realistic, and the play never pretends that it is. Its unreality is of a piece with Stratford’s other current French offering Tartuffe, with its cheerfully transparent last-minute pretence that Louis XIV will swoop in to redress all ills. In the 1960s Jerry Herman, composer of Hello Dolly and Mame, t urned The Madwoman into a musical, Dear World, another of Broadway’s conformist celebrations of nonconformity. Giraudoux’ play wears its whimsy more lightly and with more bite.
Its weakness is that it lacks a confrontation. The President and friends merely turn up at Aurelie’s place and are dispatched. They are defended instead, and in absentia, at a mock trial in which a Ragman, who has demonstrated his eloquence in the opening scene, is appointed their counsel. His defence, though, turns out to be more of a prosecution as he advances the proposition, still painfully familiar, that poverty is the fault of the poor. In itself it’s a wonderful speech and Scott Wentworth, having delivered his earlier oration beautifully, handles this one magnificently, with roguish grandiloquence.
But t hen everyone in Donna Feore’s production steps up to his or her moment in the light. In sheer consistency of performance, this is one of Stratford’s best shows this year. It’s also, as you might expect from a choreographer, well manoeuvred around the café tables. Seana McKenna plays the title role with commanding wit and timing; she doesn’t act either 80 or insane, which is a good thing. She shares the richest if overextended scene with three other “madwomen” from neighbouring precincts, each clinging to her own fantasy but perfectly willing to disown it when necessary. Kim Horsman is hilarious as the most aggressive of these, with Marion Adler nicely wispy as the most passive and Yanna McIntosh authoritative as the one whose legal connections bring the meeting back to something approaching its stated purpose.
Ben Carlson, bullet-headed and forward-thrusting, leads the charge of the profiteers, with David Collins, Rylan Wilkie and Wayne Best as his cohorts. There are discreetly flavoured performances too from Michael Spencer-Davis as a waiter and Tim Campbell as a police officer, both unexpectedly on the side of the angels, while Cyrus Lane is very funny as a sewerman who instructs the countess in the finer points of immuring your opponents.
There’s a love- plot too: two in fact. One is Aurelie’s remembered romance with the man who let her down: one fantasy from which she manages to break free. The other, one that she stagemanages, matches a kitchen wench with a young man blackmailed by all the President’s men and attempting suicide as a result. The nearest the play offers to an ordinary identifiable man, he is also, significantly, the only one denied a monologue. His situation speaks for him, most touchingly so in Antoine Yared’s performance. His beloved does get to address us directly if discreetly; Mikaela Davies is beautiful in the role.
HORSMAN IS HILARIOUS AS THE MOST AGGRESSIVE OF THESE.