A welcome shakeup unites cast and audience
Androcles and the Lion
(out of 4) By George Bernard Shaw. Directed by Tim Carroll. Until Oct. 7 at the Court House Theatre, 26 Queen St., Niagaraon-the-Lake. shawfest.com or 1-800-5117429 What’s scarier than the prospect of being thrown into an arena, facing off against armed fighters or a wild and hungry lion? In Tim Carroll’s production of George Bernard Shaw’s Androcles and the Lion, it might be more terrifying to play the characters about to meet that fate than to live through it itself.
Staying true to his mandate of breaking down barriers between performers and audiences, Carroll thrusts the company’s classically trained actors into uncharted territory, or what Carroll calls “two-way theatre.”
The cast greets the audience as they enter, wearing black and grey warmup clothes (like they’re all going to a yoga class taught by Eeyore), before the evening’s emcee of sorts (on opening night, it was Shawn Wright) introduces the play and its unconventional rules.
In each act, there are four wild cards: selected audience members have different coloured balls they can toss onto the stage at any moment, triggering an action from the cast members, from a song to the last thought that crossed their mind. Before the play begins, the audience chooses their set pieces.
An audience member suits up to play the lion. A young girl named Tessa received the biggest applause of opening night for her turn as the fabled wildcat, injured with a thorn in her paw, permanently touched by the kindness of a man who removes it.
For a regular theatregoer, the business that sets up the play is so offkilter and so casual that it begins before you’ve memorized which ball does what. Before you know it, Androcles (Patrick Galligan) and his wife Megaera (Jenny L. Wright) are travelling through the jungle, whereupon they meet the titular lion.
This is a production stripped of ego, a notable direction for one of the few plays in the season by the festival’s namesake (the other makes a home in the Festival Theatre, as the marquee season opener).
But at the same time, the actors are able to share what about the show makes them nervous, what could go wrong and how different performing this show really is to every other production they’ve done at the festival, it seems.
It both erases the actor and high- lights the person, while the ability of the actors to roll with the punches elevates the performances to something greater. It’s almost as if it’s a play about a group of people willing to sacrifice themselves in service to a higher being (or art form).
The lack of pomp and circumstance also builds camaraderie between the 14-member cast and the audience, a kind of community that is further explored in the play, which chronicles the persecution of Christians in ancient Rome.
As Androcles and his fellow Christians await their fate at the Colosse- um and plead for mercy from the Emperor (Neil Barclay), the audience too gets to decide when to wield their power or exercise compassion. Do they wait for an opportune break in the action or throw a curveball during a moment of intensity?
These are pretty hefty parallels to make — I could be stretching here — and don’t always act in service of the play. Some elements come off like gimmicks, and which ones work and which don’t will almost definitely change from night to night.
What, presumably, won’t change are some fine performances from Julia Course as Lavinia, a faithful young Christian woman who’s captured with her brother Ferrovius (Jeff Irving, another great performance) and Kyle Blair as the object of her desire, the Roman Captain.
Shrunk into a 90-minute one-act play, this Androcles resists any preconceived notions of a Shaw production, which may not interest Shaw purists but is a welcome shakeup for theatregoers (or critics) who have had their fill of traditional takes.
In any case, Carroll’s first season as artistic director has been marked as a new era.