Reviews
YOU NEVER CAN TELL Royal George Theatre/Shaw Festival
By
May 20, 2015, 14:51

Shaw Festival
Through October 25
YOU NEVER CAN TELL Royal George Theatre/Shaw Festival

By Augustine Warner

Some things never change, interfering parents and arrogant children.
That’s George Bernard Shaw’s “You Never Can Tell,” getting a really strong production from the Shaw Festival.
What’s most interesting about the play is the humor, here played broadly for director Jim Mezon, long a symbol of broad playing, as an actor and a director.
Shaw doesn’t have a reputation for being funny, humorous maybe, but not funny.
Here, he is.
The show is set in one of those British seaside resorts, with cold water and rocky shores.
A well-known writer, Mrs. Lanfrey Clandon (Tara Rosling), has arrived from the Mediterranean island of Madeira with her three obnoxious children, Dolly (Jennifer Dzialoszynski), Philip (Stephen Jackman-Torkoff) and Gloria (Julia Course).
The children are English but haven’t really lived there for reasons their mother won’t explain.
They are old enough to disagree with their mother’s philosophy of life, as shown in a series of best-selling books featuring the “modern woman,” which are apparently supporting them on their tropic (semi-tropic?) isle.
In a series of ridiculous coincidences, they eventually meet their father, Fergus Crampton (Patrick McManus).
Gloria meets and falls for the impoverished dentist, Valentine (Gray Powell), and we all meet William (a wonderful Peter Millard), who qualifies as the concierge of the Marine Hotel, able to do anything and ignore the insanity going on around him.
He’s perfectly aware he’s just making them worse, encouraging bad behavior.
But, it’s his job.
The children are watching their battling parents, while enjoying being affluent and independent, and watching Gloria and Valentine.
Mrs. Clandon and Mr. Crampton get into a desperate battle, as Crampton tries to regain control of his children, who don’t want anyone in control.
Mrs. Clandon’s lawyer, Finch M’Comas (Peter Krantz) keeps getting dragged into the old marital feud which he has been manipulating for 20 years of peace.
The night of the masked ball, M’Comas arranges for one of London’s great lawyers, the QC Bohun (Jeff Meadows), to come to the resort and resolve the Crampton/Clandon family mess.
Swirling around in his Arabian Nights costume and Commedia dell’arte mask, Bohun resolves everything and opens the way for Valentine to survive and become Gloria’s husband.
It’s almost Shakespearean comedy in the way everything winds up in the end.
The Shaw does “You Never Can Tell” so often the company understands the script in a way few can, although a quick playbill scan doesn’t list any of the performers doing the play before.
Leslie Frankish contributed a wonderful and flexible set, especially the hotel dining room which is the site of the biggest set-piece of the play which puts all of the characters together and produces the launch pad for the ultimate resolution of the plot.
Mezon does a nice job as director, although several of the performers are a little over-the-top, especially Meadows as Bohun and McManus as Crampton.
Overall, it’s a strong cast with the dominating performance by Millard as William, the pivot for the entire story and one who makes it all work.
I’m not sure why the Shaw put this show in the Royal George, with its large cast on the relatively small stage, although it does put the story in the laps even of the people in back or in the balcony.
It’s a pretty small theater.
“You Never Can Tell” is a large show, dealing with the endless story of love and romance and the roles of women and of men in a changing society, the society of Shaw’s long life and of the 21st Century.
That’s why if you are going to Niagara-on-the-Lake, put “You Never Can Tell” at the top of your ticket list.


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