“Misalliance,” George Bernard Shaw’s rambling, proto-absurdist comedy of ideas, contains nine characters searching for a plot. But what characters, and what a search!
Like all enduring playwrights, Shaw’s knack for relevant social commentary seems uncanny at times. Though he died in 1950, and his rollicking battle between the generations and classes is more than 100 years old, lines such as “Democracy reads well but it doesn’t act well” come across like jolts of electricity, shot from the playwright’s pen to strike generations of appreciative ears down through the ages.
South Coast Repertory’s decision to begin its 2010-11 season with “Misalliance” seems intrinsically right.
It’s directed by SCR cofounder Martin Benson, the theater’s resident Shavian expert. And it’s a chance for the Costa Mesa theater company to play to its strengths: solid casting, wonderfully detailed sets and costumes, and a big, meaty play of words (many, many words) and issues for the audience to sink its collective teeth into.
The cast is not uniformly successful at bringing this rarified world of nouveau riche privilege and subtly contrasting accents to life. Fortunately, it’s anchored by the redoubtable Dakin Matthews in the key role. And with Matthews at the center of a play’s solar system, one can forgive a wobbly planet or two in his orbit.
In “Misalliance,” as in many of Shaw’s plays, ruminations about politics and society are embedded in a family story in which the generations – parents and their children in particular – seem to be at war. The battle lines aren’t as sharply drawn here, though, as in Shaw’s “Major Barbara,” where father and daughter engage in full-scale ideological combat within the symbolically heavy-handed milieu of an armaments factory.
“Misalliance’s” John Tarleton is a much more agreeable man than “Major Barbara’s'” patriarch, Andrew Undershot. Tarleton, a self-made millionaire in Britain’s undergarment business, is a lover of life, and he seems determined to dispense as much homespun wisdom and money as he can before he dies. Tarleton’s philanthropy includes free libraries. He’s a voracious reader, often ending his instructional homilies with a barked order: “Read Whitman!” or “Read Darwin!” He seems never to notice others’ rolling eyes.
Tarleton’s daughter Hypatia is about to marry a headstrong aristocratic twit named Bentley Summerhays. He comes from a dissipated family — his father, Lord Summerhays, is a dour widower and retired colonial administrator whose service has sapped him of energy and the last of the Summerhays fortune. None of the parents makes any bones that each family gains something from the union of Hypatia and Bentley: She’s marrying up, he’s marrying money.
The only trouble is that Hypatia doesn’t love her pint-sized suitor, and nobody else is thrilled with him, either. “He’s over-bred. He’s like one of those expensive little dogs,” sniffs her mother.
In fact, Hypatia isn’t happy about anything in her repressive, male-dominated world. Near the end of the first act, she finally explodes. Parents, family duty, social expectations – they’re all rubbish to her. “I want to blow them to bits!” she exclaims.
Hypatia gets her wish in a plot twist that can only be described as cupid ex machina. A plane crashes into the Tarletons’ greenhouse, and its passengers, miraculously unscathed, prove just the catalyst the frustrated young woman needs.
She falls for the dashing pilot, Joseph Percival. The men turn into panting puppies over Percival’s female passenger, a mysterious Polish acrobat and thrill-seeker with the unpronounceable name of Lina Szczepanowska. The ensuing hormonal roundelay tears John Tarleton’s well-planned world apart.
Benson said he wouldn’t have done this play without Matthews, and it’s easy to understand why. A gifted veteran of the local stage scene, he combines the gravitas, flightiness and underlying unease that this role demands. And here, as in countless other roles (including Undershot in SCR’s production of “Major Barbara”), Matthews seems undeniably a man of his time. In manner, accent, attitude and persona, his Tarleton is a creation of the Edwardian world.
Such a man could indulge his excesses only with a level-headed and tolerant wife. Amelia White plays Tarleton’s beloved as a long-suffering yet understanding matriarch. White makes us see that her character’s strong instinct for compassion is the real reason this family functions as well as it does.
Kirsten Potter veers toward wild Polish caricature as Lina Szczepanowska, but she knows the laugh value of a pause or an offhand look. Her performance nicely counterpoises Melanie Lora, who delivers an exhaustingly rambunctious and whimsical Hypatia.
Even funnier is JD Cullum, one of the best comic actors working on local stages. He plays an unhinged socialist with vengeance on his mind and a secret in his coat pocket who steals into the Tarletons’ home intent on killing its patriarch but ends up making friends with the missus. Cullum’s wild-eyed performance is a constant delight.
Richard Doyle’s Lord Summerhays is also well observed. The actor captures a mix of droll cynicism and a wistful sadness over Summerhill’s failings and his son’s glaring flaws.
The younger male roles are less convincing, plagued by uncertain accents and imperfectly developed characters. They are the only significant shortcoming of this production.
Ralph Funicello’s set, a magnificent Surrey estate, contains clever references the Tarletons’ nouveau riche tastes, and Maggie Morgan’s costumes are slyly revealing of character. It’s a glittering world that’s ripe for destruction, and Percival’s plane is the perfect symbol for Shaw’s cheerily iconoclastic spirit. Crash ideas and generations into each other and see what bubbles up in the stew. The result, in Shaw’s hands, is endlessly fascinating – and forever relevant.
Contact the writer: 714-796-7979 or phodgins@ocregister.com
