Modernized Pygmalion fails to connect
Yanna McIntosh stars as the Baroness with Julia Course as Emily in at the Shaw Festival.
The Baroness and the Pig K (out of 4) Written by Michael Mackenzie. Directed by Selma Dimitrijevic. Until Oct. 6 at the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre, 10 Queen’s Parade, Niagara-on-the-Lake. ShawFest.com or 905-468-2172.
Two women cross racial, educational and social boundaries to form an intense friendship that gives them the strength to call out a repeat sexual assaulter and exact revenge.
On paper, Montreal playwright’s Michael Mackenzie’s 1998 drama The Baroness and
the Pig is the most timely production of the 2018 Shaw Festival season (if you can forgive the unfortunate title). In reality, it’s the most disappointing.
Director Selma Dimitrijevic, based in Britain and making her Shaw Festival debut, makes a point to recognize contemporary stories such as WikiLeaks and Chelsea Manning in her program notes, detailing the troubling feeling when dark secrets aren’t surprising when finally revealed — things we don’t know we already know.
Surprisingly, she doesn’t mention the #MeToo movement, which is the pinnacle of open secrets coming to light in ways that should shock and appall but have sadly been common knowledge for years.
It’s especially surprising because sexual assault is also the foundation of the dramatic tension of The Baroness and the Pig.
However, in its own way, Dimitrijevic’s omission of the movement in her notes is fitting — a viscous pace, shallow dialogue and perplexing transitions mask any hint of this sup- posed threat until the production’s final moments.
Mackenzie puts the “pig” in Pygmalion with this adaptation of the Shaw play — the wealthy and refined Baroness (Yanna McIntosh) challenges herself to turn a young girl raised amid farm animals into an obedient maid, whom she names Emily after Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1762 creed on education and child-rearing, Emile, or On Education.
The Baroness’s lesson plan is simple: she teaches Emily (Julia Course) to speak by repeating work-appropriate words and phrases (“Will that be all, Madame?”), buys her new boots, speaks Shakespeare at her.
Emily responds impossibly well, and Course’s natural ease onstage makes Emily innocent- ly charming. But the script somehow suggests there’s a true friendship building between the two women, despite an alarmingly unstable power dynamic or any real hint of connection through the dialogue.
When McIntosh isn’t proclaiming proper pronunciations to Emily from on high, or admonishing Emily’s pig-like grunts, her softer moments have an otherworldly air, like she’s escaping to another reality to elude the trauma we assume to be caused by a loveless marriage and an inattentive husband.
It’s clear she cares for Emily, but it’s never certain if the care is placed on the person instead of the benevolent act (so the Baroness thinks) of “saving” such an unfortunate creature. It takes long enough to wrap The Baroness and the Pig, your mind around how seriously this play takes its preposterous plot (the humour of Pygmalion is traded for stark design and formal character dynamics), let alone pay witness to a believable emotional bond.
Without any perceivable character growth (besides Emily getting marginally more stable in heeled shoes), the scenes of The Baroness and the Pig string along in short, jarring sequences — punctuated by blackouts, dim blue lighting and enigmatic stage business that don’t make coherent sense.
That’s unfortunate, because these moments include a major plot point in the first act that would make the play’s climax feel, if not earned, then at least signalled.
As it is, the audience is following these two women with no idea of where this relationship is heading, and why we should be interested in coming along.
This all makes the final revelation infuriating, instead of empowering, as Mackenzie may intend.
Instead of a story of female friendship and feminist rage, we get a throwaway reference to violent crimes before the play abruptly ends. Frankly, it’s a reckless and salacious portrayal of sexual violence.
The talent involved with The Baroness and the Pig is handcuffed by the script’s shortcomings, which aren’t loosened by Dimitrijevic’s direction.
This one should have been put out to pasture.
Carly Maga is a Toronto-based theatre critic and a freelance contributor for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @RadioMaga