McCamus takes audience on journey with mad king
The Madness of George III
(out of 4) By Alan Bennett, directed by Kevin Bennett. Through Oct. 15 at the Royal George Theatre, 85 Queen St., Niagara-on-the-Lake. Shawfest.com or 1-800-511-7429.
The leader of the free world has always been eccentric, but recently he seems to be losing his marbles. Is he really in charge, or are his ambitious, heartless deputies and intimates running things from behind the scenes?
While this scenario may sound all too familiar in the present geopolitical moment, it in fact describes the plot of Alan Bennett’s 1991 play The Madness of George III, which is based on the historical fact that in the late 1700s, the British monarch became severely and mysteriously mentally ill.
Although comparisons with the current U.S. president are there to be made in the imaginations of spectators, the new Shaw Festival production directed by Kevin Bennett (no relation) keeps the play in its historical period and English setting.
As his first Shaw directing credit, this is a big break for Bennett. His production cleverly takes up the challenge, laid down by new artistic director Tim Carroll, of creating a more intimate relationship between the Shaw’s productions and their spectators, by transforming the coincidentally named Royal George Theatre into an 18th-century playhouse.
As was a convention in the Georgian era, some audience members sit on the stage in box seats and are invited to interact with the actors by holding props, putting on masks and (consider yourself warned) examining glass pots full of the ailing monarch’s excrement.
The expert, loving work of set designer Ken MacDonald, lighting designer Kimberly Purtell and the Shaw’s production departments in creating this mise-en abyme (theatre-within-a-theatre) effect — down to onstage chandeliers that perfectly match the ones above the audience’s heads — is wonderful to see.
The metatheatrics create a clear logic for welcome, thorough diversity in casting, from ethnically diverse actors playing characters who historically would have been white, to several of George’s courtiers being played by women. These design and production choices create a link between the time period of the play and now, something extended by having the marvellous Tom McCamus, the show’s star, onstage (along with other cast members) before the show starts, chatting with the audience and thumbing through a contempo- rary shelter magazine.
This then feeds into one of the play’s big themes, which is the theatricality of the monarchy itself. Just as we are invited to see this show as a lavish game-playing exercise, so, within the text, does Bennett expose kingliness as a big bunch of dress-up.
Smart points, smart parallels — but Bennett’s production over-elaborates them, stretching an already thin plot almost to breaking point, along with the audience’s patience.
The basis of the story is that the king becomes unexplainably ill and then, (spoiler alert) equally unexplainably recovers. Several strands of political intrigue ensue, including a Whig uprising pitting Fox (Jim Mezon) against prime minister William Pitt (André Sills); and the aspirations of the feckless crown prince (Martin Happer) and his cronies to ascend to power. But there’s so much stage business going on that it’s hard to focus on this plotting.
This business includes the initially clever, but eventually tiresome convention of actors swapping costume pieces onstage to switch from one character to another — there’s a great deal of doubling up in a production with nearly 30 characters and a cast of 12.
The repeated image of a character in a particular stage position being replaced by another in a similar position to underline the parallels between their situations adds to the sense that the director doesn’t trust the audience to make what are actually pretty obvious connections.
It nonetheless offers a welcome vehicle for McCamus, returning to the Shaw ensemble after several years at Stratford for this juicy part and a stellar supporting role in St. Joan.
He takes the audience on the full journey with his character, from the curious, thoughtful but scattered monarch we first meet; through the pitiful wretch in a soiled diaper, howling in a wheelchair; all the way to a gorgeous Act II scene in which, returned to sanity, he reads from King Lear with some of his courtiers.
This becomes one of the production’s multiple false endings. Alan Bennett may restrict companies from touching his script, but some judicious cutting could have helped the evening reach its potential.
The production also allows its strong ensemble to reveal terrific comic timing: in particular, Chick Reid (McCamus’s real-life spouse) as the queen, who George rather adorably calls “Mrs. King,” and Sills as Pitt and Warren, one of several doctors who flock opportunistically around the royal patient hawking outlandish quack cures.
Rebecca Gibian shines as one of the king’s most compassionate equerries, Greville.
This show is worth seeing for McCamus’s great performance and for the top-notch physical realization of its meta-theatrical concept.
As for the play — as the king himself would say — “what, what?”