Grim, ugly Victory punishes its audience at Shaw
Theatre steps out of its comfort zone with mixed results
It’s not like director Tim Carroll didn’t warn us about “Victory.”
He did so last summer when he announced it, promising something offensive and not for the faint of heart.
He did so at the annual general meeting in March, hinting at more things to upset people this year after a troublesome 2018 season bothered many Shaw Festival regulars.
A sign outside the theatre for Thursday’s opening warned of “very coarse language and mature themes.”
In case it still wasn’t obvious, he walked on stage before the show to tell the audience “it’s very brave of you to come to this play. It’s rarely performed, for reasons about to become apparent.”
He was right. Three hours later, it was very apparent.
Barker himself describes his abrasive plays as “theatre of catastrophe,” and “Victory” fits the bill. It goes out of its way to be confrontational, daring the audience to stick around and abusing them some more for doing so. With its language, with its ugly spirit, with its hideous characters.
Long stretches are pointless and unpleasant, and yet there’s a morbid murder-scene fascination to the whole thing that keeps you watching.
This is the theatre equivalent to a Lars von Trier movie — distressing and irritating, but you have to see it through.
And that’s just the first hour. Even walking that tightrope, Carroll then does something so bizarre, so unnecessary that an already laborious play irritates the audience further. More on that in a bit.
Whatever its shady purpose, the play gathers a killer cast to share the misery with. It’s 1660s England, and Canadian stage icon Martha Burns plays the widow of Lord Protector John Bradshaw.
As the play begins, she’s informed that Charles II — son of the king who Bradshaw had executed — wants to exhume Bradshaw’s body parts and display them now that the family is back in power.
Being dead wasn’t enough back then — your enemies wanted to dig you up and humiliate your corpse.
The widow acts like it’s no big deal (“It’s only my husband’s old head … I often wanted to put it on a spike myself ”), but she soon heads out on a fool’s mission to gather back his body parts and bring them home. For revenge? Pride? Insanity? It’s never quite clear.
All manner of sordid episodes ensue as the new regime isn’t shy about rape and pillaging. And the C-word.
But the play isn’t interested in generating much empathy for the widow — she’s revealed to be just as heartless and cruel as her oppressors in one scene, which means there’s pretty much no one in this barren landscape the audience can warm up to. Maybe that’s the point.
Then, before the end of Act 1, the audience is informed to “follow” one of the characters. And she isn’t kidding. Everyone must get up, exit the theatre and proceed down the stairs of the Studio Theatre into what looks like a storage room to watch a scene set in the vaults of the Bank of England.
I’m at a loss as to why Carroll felt this was necessary. Many seniors with canes looked aggravated to be shuffled around. Some were forced to take the elevator.
This entire useless endeavour took about 15 minutes. Fifteen minutes added to an already punishing play. All for a brief scene lit only by candlelight, with people standing around because there aren’t enough chairs.
Maybe there’s a case for more ‘interactive’ theatre at Shaw. This play doesn’t make it. There are ways to make an audience uncomfortable without making them physically uncomfortable.
The show never recovers. The entire second act is misery piled on top of misery, with characters stumbling over their own confusing morals. There’s no point wondering who’s good or bad … after a certain point, they’re all bad.
It squanders a stellar cast that includes Tom Rooney, Tom McCamus, Sara Topham and Gray Powell in a nightmare world that doesn’t allow light. Barker would view a happy ending as the real tragedy. That doesn’t mean the play itself should be joyless.
It also doesn’t mean the Shaw Festival should avoid these challenging works. They’re risky plays for a reason — that’s the deal when you step out of your comfort zone.
In his third season as artistic director, Carroll has not shied away from that. Hopefully, better gambles than “Victory” await.