Shaw’s Middletown is marvellous
On Friday, the Shaw Festival paid tribute to its former artistic director Jackie Maxwell by attaching her name to the Studio Theatre — the intimate venue she helped create, and which offered some of the greatest plays of her 14-year tenure.
Only fitting the first show of the renamed theatre is the first great show under new artistic director Tim Carroll. The Canadian premiere of Will Eno’s Middletown is only playing for two months, but it’ll be the one that lingers this season.
Like a spiritual cousin to Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, which the company staged last year, Middletown is a beautifully profound show about the vagaries of life and the people who endure it. To the denizens of this small fictional town, even the simple things — like digging up a rock or sitting in a chair — carry the significance of all that has happened before. There’s a cosmic awareness that every single thing you do or see is the result of a million other things happening that led you to this moment.
Much like Our Town, or at least it’s folky first half, Middletown introduces you to seemingly insignificant people who combine to form the fabric of their community. The police officer (Benedict Campbell) who likes to talk into his radio to see if anyone’s listening. The landscaper (Peter Millard) who buries a pair of sunglasses for future generations to discover and wonder about. The astronaut (Karl Ang) observing it all with profound awe from above.
There’s a geeky librarian (Tara Rosling), the burned out mechanic (Jeff Meadows ), the bored tour guide (Sara Topham) … musing about why they’re here, and what comes after. “People come, people go,” says the cop. “Crying, by the way, in both directions.”
The heart of the play belongs to Shaw pillars Moya O’Connell and Gray Powell as Mary and John, who form an awkward friendship through their shared confusion about life. She’s pregnant, with an absentee husband. He’s a parttime plumber, full-time outsider still trying to find a purpose. As he says, he’s between crummy jobs — he just doesn’t know what the next one is yet.
“I read articles about identity theft and I get a little jealous,” he says. “Take it, you know?”
Eno’s characters shine with their faults and eccentricities. If Our Town is the show’s clear inspiration, it also draws from the well of David Lynch and Robert Altman to create a rich, lived-in tone to this suburbia. To draw the audience in further, the cast often speaks to them directly, acknowledging the casual observers of their daily routine. It goes even further when they play a fake audience commenting on the play they’re in. And just like the production of Androcles and the Lion this season, the cast comes out early to mingle with the crowd — all part of Carroll’s drive to change the way Shaw theatregoers interact with the plays.
The days of static, stand-offish shows are over here.
Somewhat predictably, Middletown takes a dark turn in its second act, perhaps to add some dramatic heft to all this meta-talk. But what could have felt hokey chooses a sweetly satisfying route instead. Director Meg Roe never gets in the way of the play’s eloquence, which makes the ending all the more devastating. Life is both beautiful and overbearing, until it’s over and it’s someone else’s turn.
Campbell and Rosling sum it up:
“One day, there’s going to be a last store you ever went into.”
“But isn’t it great there was ever a first?”