Here is my review of the 2001 show, ably edited by the late Doug Specht, and published in "The Muskoka Times". Click once to reveal the link that will take you to a scanned copy from the online edition :
http://tinyurl.com/297htp3
Just in case that doesn't work, here is my re-typed copy:
THEY DID “THE TEACUP THING”, BLESS THEM
The opening of the 2001 Straw Hat Festival on Tuesday was a special event in the life of the 100-year-old Gravenhurst Opera House. Former Straw Hat Player Ted Follows has returned, along with seven other members of his own theatrically gifted family, plus Robin Craig, in a freshly reminiscent revival of Noel Coward’s 1924 comedy, “Hay Fever”.
Fifty-two years after performing the part of the very juvenile Simon Bliss on our stage, Ted Follows plays the novel-writing Bliss family patriarch, David.
Lawrence Follows takes his father’s earlier role of Simon Bliss.
The project originated with Lawrence’s inspiration to “pay tribute to the Straw Hat Players, Canada’s very first professional summer theatre”. Despite their busy schedules in film, on stage and at home, the Follows family pronounced themselves thrilled to assemble for this historic even, co-produced by Lawrence follows and Robert Missen.
An appreciative and elegant audience established the tone of the evening the moment the curtains parted, by warmly applauding the set, with opening actors Samantha and Lawrence Follows fetchingly draped about it. Stage right: French doors open to the unseen garden with a punt moored on the river. Upstage right: the front door, whose translucent glass allows us to see the silhouette of each arrival. Ivy trails above both doorways, with effects of light and shadow on the leaves.
The sizeable hall of the Bliss’s house in Cookham breathes lived-in, pastel charm. A sturdy stairway with halfway landing leads upstage centre to the novelist’s study, and an unspecified number of bedrooms. “The Japanese Room” -- full of offstage character, is reserved for guests of honour, of whom, this June weekend, there are to be four.
When I first saw the Straw Hat Players do “Hay Fever” here in 1949, I didn’t particularly notice the plot -- having too much fun, I guess. I suspect it was the playwright’s intention to conceal with apparent frothiness how well-woven is the story line.
The plot is simple, neatly squared off. Four members of the Bliss family, bored by country life, invite four guests for a quiet weekend in the country, the complication being that nobody bothered to inform anyone else about the chosen guest until it was too late.
Once the theme is established, the play seems to romp along, heedless of convention. Actually, the pace does vary, giving actors and audience a respite from time to time, and preparing them for the next escalation.
Quiet moments alternate with bright, busy or downright noisy scenes, depending how many characters are present. The dialogue varies from softly intimate, briskly witty, or becomes a simultaneous family quatralogue, all in full cry.
The guests arrive during the first act - the dashing American in his automobile, the “femme fatale” by the only local taxi from the train station. After a suitable interval, the diplomat and shy young lady are deposited at the Bliss home by the same taxi. They are respectively welcomed, ignored or insulted by Bliss family members. Shortly before the first act curtain, all assemble around the tea tray except Clara, the servant, who prepared it, brought it in and plunked it down without ceremony.
For the, the acid test for any performance of “Hay Fever” comes just before the curtain falls on Act One, as the cast do, or do not, lift their cups in unison. If they don’t, I feel something vital is missing. “The teacup thing” is all I remember of the Straw Hat Players’ 1949 production. The synchronization of teacups here is not only pure comedy; it can also mean resignation, rebellion and a host of other feelings boiling beneath the surface, as four desperate hosts and four disparate guests face a weekend together.
The second act opens with muted lighting on a tableau of everyone dressed for dinner, frozen in place as in a snapshot. When the stage lighting comes on full, animation kicks in. Dinner is over, apparently to everyone’s relief, but the drinks go on.
The family is determined all shall join in their favourite guessing game, one that happens to require histrionic ability natural to a Bliss, but excruciatingly painful to the guests. After muddling through this ordeal, people scatter, escaping in surprising couples to engage in mild flirtations. Judith Bliss, mother and retired actress, escalates her own and everyone else’s romantic gestures -- offstage and on -- into high drama.
Scenes from her meatiest roles in past plays somehow work their way into the dialogue, to confuse everybody but her own family, “acting up to Mother” as usual.
The third and final act shows the guests sneaking down one by one the following morning to the tune of rattling rain and thunder, to snatch a bite of toast or scrambled egg and a gulp of coffee. Agreeing that the family is quite mad, they feverishly plot a group getaway, than steal upstairs to pack.
The family replaces them at the deserted breakfast table. Soon absorbed in vigorous criticism of the patriarch’s latest chapter, they do not notice the four guests filtering down the stairs and out the door, until it slams.
Each character is a perfect foil for all the others, and has its own section of the human psyche to prowl or march around in. Robin Craig as Clara, the theatrical dresser turned maid, steals the scene every time she stalks on stage, and nobody minds a bit. Her character is supposed to steal the scene anyway, as are all the dramatic personae in this cleverly crafted play.
Clara’s brash voice and hearty accent contrast with the flutelike, often querulous, tones of the Bliss children, who keep petulantly ringing for her. Her uncompromising grey print house-dress and beige cardigan or pinny set off the butterfly colours of the fashionable family and guests. And when she sings and dances “Tea for Two” as she clears the table, she brings down the house.
Ted Follows’s lovely former wife Dawn Greenhalgh is superb as Judith Bliss, retired actress and mother. Her timing is particularly effective on a stage where everyone masters that art. When she sings the first verse of “J’attendrai”, you can hear a pin drop. Hers is a pliable, true alto voice capable of doing justice to the piece made famous by Edith Piaff and Charles Trenet. This is, however, no mere imitation. Dawn Greenhalgh’s interpretation comes with her own depth of pathos and wry smile.
Megan Follows slinks gracefully from charming pose to alluring pose as the sophisticated Myra Arundel, she of the subtly seductive cigarette-holder. Her pose of cool detachment beaks down when her host calls her bluff, and the wary woman behind the siren’s mask reveals herself momentarily.
Former child actress and current screen-writer Edwina Follows if Jackie Coryton, bashfully uncertain why David Bliss invited her in the first place. We see her character struggling to deal in a ladylike manner with rejection, rudeness, demands to do a solo dance “after the manner of the word” and, finally, having to face dragons all night. We feel for this girl pitch-forked into what, for a sensitive, shrinking violet, must be at worst a den of demons and at best a social ordeal. There is hope for her stiff upper lip to relax a little, as she tries to cure another visitor of the hiccups.
Lawrence Follows bounds boyishly about as Simon Bliss, while son-in-law Sean O’Bryan makes a divinely sculptured, very American, admirer of Judith Bliss. Stuart Hughes is the stiff-backed British diplomat Richard Greatham who says just the right things in the midst of unabashed bluntness.
The costuming flows with the setting and the play -- ah, those Twenties fashions, for both men and women. Garden hats, fedoras and cloches off to co-ordinators Hilary Corbett and Judy Cooper-Sealy for the clothes, wigs and hair ornaments.
Thank you, Director Follows, for that elegant lifting of teacups, in near perfect unison, that took me back to your 1949 “Hay Fever” with Araby Lockart, Charmion King, Kate Reid and Donald and Murray Davcs. It made your family triumph of 2001 all the more delightful.
(Posted in The Muskoka Times July 6, 2001)
And now, back to the official Gravenhurst Opera House link:
http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/
And now, back to the official Gravenhurst Opera House link:
http://www.gravenhurstoperahouse.com/
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