Leaving Shaw’s stage on a high note
Artistic director leaves mark by bringing diversity and opportunity to the festival
Typical of her energy and style, Jackie Maxwell is going out with a bang.
The artistic director of The Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, is celebrating her 14th and last season at the iconic theatre, which is turning 55 this year.
“Across the board, we have great big ensemble pieces such as Sweeney Todd and Our Town to celebrate the company and my time with them,” says Maxwell.
The 10 diverse productions — from George Bernard Shaw’s Mrs. Warren’s Profession to two commissioned adaptations and North American premiers of The Adventures of the Black Girl in Search for God and Alice in Wonderland— will help Maxwell achieve her goal.
Maxwell says she wanted to give herself “two great big presents” by directing Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd — The Demon Barber of Fleet Street and Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya because both ensemble pieces reveal the company’s breadth of talent.
Uncle Vanya — a play about missed opportunities, old men lusting after young women, women loving men who don’t love them back — focuses on a family struggling to maintain a way of life.
“With Chekhov, I always wanted to see Neil Barclay play Vanya and Moya O’Connell play Yelena,” says Maxwell, “because I knew that they and the whole company could be brave and go deep and render a layered performance.”
Sweeney Todd also showcases the great creative team at the Shaw.
“It’s a brilliant musical ostensibly about a gory, crazy guy,” says Maxwell. “But it’s more than that. In an era where people are watching TV shows like Dexter, audiences are now interested in understanding the psychology of people who kill people.” It’s really about class, injustice and poverty, she adds.
Benedict Campbell as Sweeney Todd and Corinne Koslo as Mrs. Lovett are strong actors who pull off the big glorious piece. At the beginning of the show, when the entire company sings “Attend to the Tale of Sweeney Todd,” Maxwell promises it will give audiences goosebumps.
In true Shavian tradition, the year’s playbill continues to reveal injustices and social assumptions. Master Harold . . . and The Boys by Athol Fugard, a South African playwright, is a coming-of-age piece about a white boy who must come to grips with apartheid.
Similarly, Engaged by W.S. Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan fame) taps into an outrageous and hilarious tale of love and money.
“I love archeology,” says Maxwell, “and this play digs right down into the heart of societal niceties and their not-so-nice underbelly.”
Engaged inspired Oscar Wilde to write The Importance of Being Earnest, and by extension the Shaw Festival’s offering this year A Woman of No Importance.
“It’s a perfect example of Wilde’s wit and style, exposing the rot in society,” Maxwell says.
In1932, Shaw wrote a novella called The Adventures of a Black Girl in Her Search for God, which scandalized society at the time. Critics charged that Shaw was mocking Christianity and the church.
Several years ago, Lisa Codrington, an actress at Shaw, approached Maxwell with the idea of creating an adaptation of the novella.
“I thought it a grand idea,” Maxwell says, “for a young, contemporary woman of colour to take on this story.” Codrington takes the story further and, collaborating with director Ravi Jain, has been able to reflect Shaw’s anarchic spirit while putting her own twist on the story in a truly surprising way, says Maxwell.
Another adaptation is Peter Hinton’s Alice in Wonderland. Over the past four years, Hinton and his cast and crew have been workshopping the play. While steeped in the Victorian era, the play also uses new technology to render the book’s fantastical passages such as when Alice falls down the rabbit hole and shrinks in size.
“This adaptation allows the story to be told in an interesting theatrical way,” Maxwell says, “with all kinds of bells and whistles, a smart mix of old-fashioned sleight of hand and video technology.”
As she plays out her final season, it’s clear that Maxwell has had a profound impact on the festival by encouraging a diverse range of Canadian, female and international voices, and allowing plays by Shaw’s contemporaries to share the stage. Maxwell is also proud of the 15 new adaptations she commissioned during her tenure, as well as establishing family programming such as this year’s Alice in Wonderland and the enormously popular offering from last year, Peter and the Star Catcher.
“I will always love the Shaw and I will always be a director in my heart,” Maxwell says, “and I always wanted to go out on a high note.” Indeed, with the 2016 season already underway, she no doubt will.