ENTERING ‘A PRIVILEGED UNIVERSE’
Time period of PBS hit is theatre’s bread and butter
Shaw Festival gives a look into Downton’s day,
They’re doing the Downton Abbey thing over at the Shaw Festival, just like they have since 1962.
Long before the hit TV series brought early 20th-century British elegance back into fashion, the artists and craftspeople in Niagara-on-the-Lake have been keeping the same tradition alive and vibrant. The major part of the Shaw Festival’s mandate is to “produce plays from and about (Bernard Shaw’s) era” and since the witty, bearded Irish curmudgeon penned most of his works between 1892 and 1939, it puts the festival squarely in that PBS sweet spot ruled over by Downton Abbey now, and series like Brideshead Revisited and Upstairs, Downstairs in decades past.
“Our whole existence is based on looking at the past through a contemporary lens to clarify the present,” says artistic director Jackie Maxwell. “You study that period, especially between the two world wars, and you find things that are amazing cyclical. Things that were issues then about personal identity, sexuality, the nature of marriage are all being explored once again.”
Four of this season’s 10 shows ( Major Barbara, Lady Windermere’s Fan, Our Betters and Enchanted April) explore that incredibly seductive time, when men were men, women were women, clothes were divine and the way you stirred a cup of tea revealed more about you than your OkCupid profile does today.
The season officially opens May 10. Why do we like visiting this world so much? Peter Hinton, the director of Lady Windermere’s Fan, feels it’s because “it gives access to all people to a privileged universe that’s hidden to them. It also helps satisfy our appetite for gossip, because we like seeing that what appears to be whole or perfect still has cracks in it.”
But besides the schadenfreude factor, Hinton also believes that people go to these plays “for the clothes,” just like they did when they were first presented.
“Lady Windermere’s Fan was the first play ever to hire a French couturier house to design the clothes. The play opened in the winter but was set in the spring, so you could see it to decide what you were going to wear the next season.”
Judith Bowden is designing the costumes for Major Barbara and she agrees that “the clothing you see in these shows is one of the major attractions for many people. There’s a natural elegance to it that’s gone nowadays and we enjoy seeing that recreated. Just technically, there’s more fabric to look at in the dresses and suits, and there’s pleasure in seeing silk and linen move.
“Nowadays, if you think about putting on a white linen blouse, you worry about what you’ll be doing all day,” she laughs. “These people put on full-length white linen coats and never worried. We all know that linen crumples, but owning those garments speaks to the ability of having servants. If you go for a car ride and get all crumpled, you know there’ll be someone there to press it for you so you can look fresh once again.”
One of the great unspoken charms of the clothing from this period, Bowden explains, “is that the natural lines of the gowns are just sensually pleasing. That sexy curve through the back on women, the tightly fit jackets on the men. The fabrics all look very touchable, like they’re inviting you to reach out. And in some of the evening wear, let’s be frank, you see pretty much everything hanging out.”
Both Bowden and Hinton stress that the rhythm of the period is much slower, in the ballroom as well as the bedroom.
“I’ve come to realize that the more important you are in these plays, the more slowly you move,” says Hinton.
Bowden adds that “if everything is slower, that includes seduction and you’re more aware of every step: the approach, the anticipation, the first move. It’s all delicious.”
When it comes to understanding the moves of this period, there are no better guides than veteran Shaw Festival members Sharry Flett and Guy Bannerman, who, between them, have more than 50 years with the company.
They have come to be an all-purpose resource for directors, actors and designers about proper period behaviour. They also run a program open to the public, called “Manners of the Mandate.”
“It all started years ago when wardrobe came to me and asked if I could help some of the younger women in the company out, because they didn’t know how to move in these dresses,” says Flett.
“You have to understand that nowadays, anything written before 1990 is a period play to most younger actors,” adds Bannerman. “How do you shake a cocktail? How do you hold a rotary dial phone? When you wear your hat this way, why are you unlikely to get a job?”
Flett’s challenge nowadays is helping actors “get the whole period notion inside their bodies. Peter Hinton told his company not to come to rehearsal in sweatshirts and jeans
and running shoes, or they’d never get to the heart of the play. “It’s absolutely kinesiological. “We always begin by asking, ‘What do manners mean?’ and then we show them the corset, the skirt, the shoes. It’s amazing the change that happens. The women start to move with their heads lifted more upwards, and look taller and broader and more confident.”
Bannerman and Flett agree that some of the most complicated rituals exist around that staple of much elegant British drama: the tea service. “We teach them you never stick your little finger out,” sighs Flett. “Wrong! You don’t put your hand on the teapot cover to hold it down. Very gauche.”
“We have to teach people that ‘Will you play mother?’ isn’t some kind of bizarre sexual role-playing, but simply an invitation to be in charge of serving the tea,” says Bannerman.
Adds Flett, “You have to get used to thin china teacups and learning that how you use your teaspoon can reveal your whole inner life.”
The extent to which the world has changed becomes clear to Bannerman when he discusses online dating. “I guess that’s the only alternative available to many younger people today. You used to go to house parties or balls where it was assumed that everyone there was your kind of people. There’s no such assurances anymore.”
Flett brings it back to Downton Abbey. “You watch that show and you see people working with rules, making them, breaking them, but doing it all exquisitely. There’s something very comforting in that.
“It’s an interesting code of behaviour. You have to realize that there is both sexiness and freedom in restriction. What a wonderful combination! And the clothes are entrancing.
“No wonder people love this period.”
“You have to understand that nowadays, anything written before 1990 is a period play to most younger actors. How do you shake a cocktail? How do you hold a rotary dial phone? When you wear your hat this way, why are you unlikely to get a job?” GUY BANNERMAN SHAW FESTIVAL MEMBER