Alexis Gordon as Amy Spettigue, Mike Nadajewski as Lord Fancourt Babberley and Marla McLean as Kitty Verdun in Charley’s Aunt at the 2021 Shaw Festival.Lauren Garbutt/Shaw Festival
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- Title: Charley’s Aunt
- Written by: Brandon Thomas
- Director: Tim Carroll
- Actors: Mike Nadajewski, Peter Fernandes and Andrew Lawrie
- Company: The Shaw Festival
- Venue: The BMO Stage, outdoors on the Festival Theatre Grounds to July 30; the Royal George Theatre thereafter
- City: Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
- Year: Runs to Oct. 10, 2021
In 1924, the playwright Bernard Shaw boasted about what a big deal he was: “My currency is as universal as that of Sherlock Holmes, or Charlie Chaplin or Charley’s Aunt.”
One of those is the odd man out now – and I don’t mean Shaw.
Charley’s Aunt is one of the great theatrical phenomena of all time, its title synonymous with “smash” for ages. The 1892 farce, by one-hit wonder English playwright Brandon Thomas, broke records for its original run – and was thereafter revived or adapted like clockwork well into the 20th century.
There isn’t much evidence of that incredible popularity enduring into the 21st century, however.
Indeed, I personally had never had an opportunity to see Charley’s Aunt despite a quarter century of rather vigorous theatregoing until the current production directed by Tim Carroll came along at the Shaw Festival.
Charley’s Aunt has a setup very much based in the social strictures of 19th-century England. The gist is that Oxford students Jack Chesney (Peter Fernandes) and Charley Wykeham (Andrew Lawrie) are desperate to propose to their sweethearts Kitty Verdun (Marla McLean) and Amy Spettigue (Alexis Gordon) before summer holidays separate them.
The surprise announcement that Charley’s mysterious aunt, Donna Lucia D’Alvadorez, the widow of a Brazilian millionaire, is about to arrive in town is first seen as an impediment to this goal – until the young men realize her arrival provides the perfect pretext to invite the young women they admire over for lunch.
Claire Jullien as Donna Lucia D’Alvadorez and Gabriella Sundar Singh as Ela Delahay.Lauren Garbutt/Shaw Festival
When the aunt does not materialize as planned, however, they are up a creek without a chaperone. And so, Jack and Charley enlist their pal Lord Fancourt Babberley (Mike Nadajewski) to put on a dress that he just happens to have on hand (he’s an amateur actor) and pretend to be Charley’s aunt.
From here, the farcical tropes pile up. There’s a tyrannical father/guardian (Ric Reid) who courts the fake aunt in a shameless bid to get her money, and a more likeable father (Patrick Galligan) who does so as well with a more gallant aim, so that his son Jack can afford to marry for love instead of money.
Naturally, Charley’s real aunt (the effortlessly classy Claire Jullien) shows up in the second of the play’s acts so that there can be a third – and brings with her another young lady (Gabriella Sundar Singh) so that every Jack shall have his Jill by curtain time.
What was striking to me in watching Charley’s Aunt for the first time is how unlikeable its main characters are. Jack alternates between berating and borrowing money from his butler (Neil Barclay, who was also in Shaw Festival’s last production of the play in 1992) – and both Jack and Charley have zero gratitude for their friend Fanny’s commitment to the cross-dressing ruse. I was reminded, in a strange way, of the tone of The Hangover movie franchise rather than the softer or more satirical comedies I’m used to seeing on the stage.
Thomas’s script must not have endured because of its tepid love-before-money message or the wittiness of the writing – although Fanny’s repeated refrain, “I’m from Brazil. Where the nuts come from,” is no doubt a brilliantly dumb running gag.
I suspect the almost mathematical construction of the farce played a major role in its long success; you can see everything coming, for sure, but there’s still satisfaction to be found in solving an equation.
The main not-so-secret ingredient, of course, is the man in the dress at its centre – a comedy trope that is as old as gendered clothing and sticks around in pop culture despite successive generations of critiques that have found it misogynistic, or homophobic or, most recently, transphobic.
Despite giving it the old college try, I failed to find anything to be offended about in Carroll’s production of Charley’s Aunt. The transvestism is depicted simply as a means to an end – and Nadajewski plays Fanny playing the aunt in the most neutral way possible, even in a famous scene where she puffs away on a cigar.
Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, Freud said, and so it is here. But without the possibility of offence, the power of the farce is no doubt neutered. Nadajewski’s performance is impressive in its physical precision – he knows how to handle slapstick better than anyone else on stage – but comes across as ultimately mechanical. Indeed, much of the production does.
The show succeeds best instead in those moments where sentiment intrudes. I enjoyed particularly the love that glowed between Fernandez and Galligan as father and son, even as they dared not express it too openly because of Victorian mores – and also how McLean’s Kitty, with kindness, took control of every situation she was in from the hapless men around her.
Perhaps everything will find its groove when the cast moves later this week from the outdoor BMO Stage to an indoor stage where there can be a more intimate connection between artists and audience. It’s practically impossible to perform a comedy to an audience that is not only masked, but distanced outdoors. Laughter is contagious after all, and the whole setup at the Shaw Festival is designed to avoid contagion.
In the interest of consistency across all critics’ reviews, The Globe has eliminated its star-rating system in film and theatre to align with coverage of music, books, visual arts and dance. Instead, works of excellence will be noted with a critic’s pick designation across all coverage.