What^s in a Director?

I hope you get a chance to visit Niagara-on-the-Lake this summer and attend a performance of George Bernard Shaw's Arms and the Man at the Shaw Festival. If you read the play beforehand, you may notice the role of the director when you watch the piece performed live on stage.

I have just experienced it exactly as director Jackie Maxwell intended - I thoroughly enjoyed the comedy from beginning to end. That being said, it may not be quite the way George Bernard Shaw intended...

Jackie Maxwell has inserted some subtle new stage directions and made some clever personal choices to heighten her actors' performances; most of these ideas are not present in any version of the script I have ever read.

For example, one of Mike Shara's best moments is when his character Sergius dutifully but without any comprehension signs the orders Bluntschli drafts (to move the three regiments of Bulgarian infantry back to the capital). Ms. Maxwell has given Sergius a small gilded mirror by which he may study his overly dramatic signature and so amplify his line, 'This hand is more accustomed to the sword than to the pen.' It's a throw away line in the script made funny on stage - really funny on stage. The audience laughed so hard that Peter Hutt as Major Paul Petkoff had to wait to deliver his line 'It's very good of you, Bluntschli: it is indeed, to let yourself be put upon in this way.' Everyone that's seen the play will know exactly what I am talking about, yet in the script this line doesn't seem that remarkable.

Another example occurs in Act III when Sergius challenges Bluntschli to the cavalry duel. The original script has Sergius stare dead pan into his opponent's eyes, but Maxwell and Shara have colluded to place Sergius horizontal on stage doing pushups! This absurd stage direction works magically and the result is simply hilarious. The upcoming duel is made to look as absurd as Sergius and his entire military career.

Finally, Bernard Shaw is clear in his directions for the library - the electric buzzer is to be positioned 'between the door and the stove.' But Jackie Maxwell (with the help of Sue LePage's superb set design) has placed the contraption on the extreme stage right. To show off her precious electric bell Nora McLellan as Catherine Petkoff must amble across the entire set - it's very amusing. In fact Nora's 'trot to the bell' is easily one of the play's most comedic moments.

Reflecting on what it takes to make this comedy funny, I must say the director's creative license seems to manifest itself most in Mike Shara's Sergius, but Bluntschli and the Petkoffs are also marvelously well-crafted.

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Related Information: 1. Shaw Festival '06 www.shawfest.com 2. Information about the play "Arms and the Man" www.shawfest.com/2006/web/content.php?docid=1_3_1