Misalliance

by Bernard Shaw

seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 14 December 2017

Paul Miller directs his third Shaw play at the ever-impressive Orange Tree Theatre (unfortunately I missed his The Philanderer though I saw Widowers' Houses in 2015). The new play fizzes with ideas and with almost absurd social situations, but the witticisms reveal unexpected truths and often surprisingly painful tensions, both between characters, and between the social roles people live by and their own (usually flattering) images they have of themselves.

In the hands of an excellent cast the now-unfashionable wordiness of Shaw is managed with great verve and dexterity; the speed of delivery is perhaps only possible in such an intimate space, but it certainly helps in preventing the play from being bogged down by its own verbiage. What lifts Shavian cleverness into something more probing is the deft revelations of depths of character beneath the surface brilliance of the dialogue. From the peculiar camp narcissism of Rhys Isaac-Jones's Bentley Summerhayes to the worldly-weariness of Simon Shepherd as his father Lord Summerhayes, from the brittle self-righteousness of Jordan Mifsúd's interloper to the bullying suavity of Luke Thallon's Joey Percival, we see people who can experience real pain, which their superficial behaviour can mask but not entirely conceal. 

In the meantime Pip Donaghy as Mr Tarleton heads a dysfunctional family with an extraordinary mixture of bluster, enthusiastic reverence for written texts, and rueful incomprehension. Gabrielle Lloyd as his wife is perhaps the most common-sensical person on stage, but is still a prisoner of convention who cannot imagine why anyone would want to read a Bible on a weekday. Tom Hanson as their son Johnny is the epitome of the articulate bore whose opinions are rooted in plain talking but ill-informed thinking, yet one can see how such a young man might be formed - and ill-served - with such a father. Marli Siu as the daughter Hypatia (or 'Patsy') presents a fascinating example of Shavian 'new womanhood', impatient of convention where she finds it stifling, but ruthlessly prepared to appeal to it when it serves the purpose of concealing her indiscretions, leading Joey Percival into an impossible situation where honesty and honour cannot co-exist. 

Destabilising all the social smoothness of this disparate group of people is Lara Rossi's Polish aviator Lena Szczepanowska whose arrival with Percival in a literal crash-landing in the garden transforms the purely social comedy of the first half into something more probing in the second. Her defence of her life-style makes a marked contrast to the indulgent rebelliousness of Hypatia, who in the end seems content with the prospect of having a husband bought for her.

Dressed apparently in the 1920s (though the play was written in 1909) the production cleverly balances Shavian cynicism with probing revelations of character, occasionally acute social discomfort, and an infectious enjoyment of the absurdity of the situations portrayed. Highly enjoyable.