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Martin Happer and Deborah Hay star in The Game of Love and Chance.Emily Cooper/Shaw Festival
- Title: The Game of Love and Chance
- Written by: Pierre de Marivaux
- Director: Tim Carroll
- Actors: Kristopher Bowman, Sochi Fried, Martin Happer, Deborah Hay, Rebecca Northan, Travis Seetoo, Graeme Somerville, Jenny L. Wright
- Company: Shaw Festival
- Venue: Spiegeltent
- City: Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
- Year: To Oct. 8, 2023
In his seven seasons at the Shaw Festival, artistic director Tim Carroll has thought to instill a little more casualness and risk-taking in the company, attempting various experiments in improvised performance and audience participation. As he recounts in the program notes for his new production of The Game of Love and Chance, he was inspired by his experiences working at London’s Factory Theatre, a company renowned for a production of Hamlet in which the only props were objects supplied by the audience. Carroll also staged an improvised version of Homer’s The Odyssey there: Each night the cast was issued with a different instruction – or obstruction – for each section of the story, such as perform it as an opera, or a radio play, or a personal monologue.
With Love and Chance, a classic romantic comedy of swapped identities by French playwright Pierre de Marivaux, Carroll is finally making a big bet on importing this approach to the Shaw. Staged in the round in the festival’s charming spiegeltent, it sticks to Marivaux’s plot, but the script is entirely improvised by the actors. Their roles are assigned more or less at random, with some of them determined by rolls of the dice at the start of the evening.
The night I attended, Rebecca Northan graciously consented to play the father, Orgon, and Jenny L. Wright played his daughter, Silvia, who anxious to know more about the man to whom she is betrothed. She and her servant Lisette (on this occasion Deborah Hay) concoct a scheme to change places so Silvia can better observe the noble Dorante. But unbeknownst to the scheming ladies, Dorante and his valet have had the same idea so, that night, Graeme Somerville was a nobleman pretending to be the servant Chaise – the name was provided by an audience member asked to name a piece of French furniture – while his coarse manservant (Kristopher Bowman) pretended to be him.
The energy was high and the results were hilarious, mainly because of the comic contrast between the actors bumbling along in contemporary colloquial English and the 18th-century dramatic conventions in a plot that turns on notions of correct appearances and rigid class differences. Scenes seemed to begin and end smoothly without the audience becoming aware how hard the actors must be working to hit two intermissions, and nobody upstaged anybody else, all testament to great professionalism.
That night, some of the highlights included Northan’s lecherous Orgon, her mouth stuffed with double entendres, Wright’s anxious recitation of all the horrible things an unknown husband might prove to be and Hay’s delight as Lisette at finding herself elevated to the aristocracy. (Mainly she liked the big bum provided by her new crinoline.) She and Bowman were dirty dancing at every opportunity while he provided ludicrous animal metaphors in an attempt to woo her. Somerville, meanwhile, tried valiantly to conjure more elevated planetary comparisons for Wright’s Silvia, in recognition his character is a nobleman in disguise.
But who knows? On some other night, perhaps Somerville will be playing the bumbling servant unconvincingly disguised as a noble and Bowman will be reincarnated as a man of intelligence and refinement. Or other members of the nimble cast, which also includes Sochi Fried, Martin Happer and Travis Seetoo, may take on those roles.
There is a thematic symmetry to all this. The Game of Love and Chance turns on swapped identities, suggesting that love is often swayed by appearances, so the tumbling roles fit neatly with the play’s source of comedy. Meanwhile, the improvised dialogue provides a nice parallel for the verbosity of wooing lovers.
Regardless of who plays which part, give them an hour or maybe two and it will all end happily, the actors will take a bow and then cheerfully mingle with the audience. And the spiegeltent bar remains open after the show.
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. (Television reviews, typically based on an incomplete season, are exempt.)