The Philanderer
George
Bernard Shaw liked his little jokes. Most of The Philanderer,
his second play, written in 1893 but not performed until 1905, is set in the
Ibsen Club, where men are not allowed to be manly, nor women womanly. The
theatre at the end of the 19th-century was in the grip of Ibsen’s
social dramas, and Shaw was poking fun at feminist drama as epitomised by
A Doll’s House, whilst himself setting up a robust debate
about the New Woman in society and the nature of love.
This
production (directed by Bart Williams) is a spirited affair and a reminder
that early Shaw could be much closer to farce than one imagines. Leonard
Charteris, the self-confessed philanderer of the title, thinks himself in love
with two women, the serene, free-thinking widow Grace Tranfield, and the irritatingly
petulant Julia Craven. He seems perfectly happy to lose both of them, however, because
the person he is really in love with is himself.
Other satirical targets are Victorian
fatherhood and the medical profession – the latter in the person of Dr Paramore
(Darren Munn), whose discovery of a new liver disease is quickly debunked, leading to the eternally vexed Colonel Craven being suddenly reprieved from a
gruesome diet and an early death.
Shaw
fell out of love with this play, feeling it had become dated by 1930, and in
truth it is rough around the edges. The constant allusions to Ibsen and
Ibsenism overextend the joke, and Charteris, for all his wit and swagger, is a
puffed up bore. However, there are some delightful lines, such as “You might have married him not because
you loved him, but because you didn’t love anybody else. When one is young, one
marries out of mere curiosity, just to see what it’s like”.
Michael
Longhi looks every inch the young blade and plays Charteris for all he is
worth, but lacks the verbal dexterity that would give him extra polish. Marcus
Taylor as Craven does a very nice line in curmudgeonly self-pity, and Kelli
White endows Julia with all the suspiciously ‘womanly’ emotionalism one could
wish for. Sarine Sofair as Grace and Robert Rowe as her father have the exact
measure of Shaw – a light touch and an inner humanity – and they give a welcome
balance to a production that occasionally races ahead of itself in its
willingness to be entertaining. Shaw is a rare choice for small-scale theatre
companies. This shows what can be done.
– Giles
Cole
