'Candida' charms, but lacks real resonance

By Alexis Soloski

Stan Wojewodski, Jr. deserves copious praise and considerable blame for George Bernard Shaw's Candida, the second offering of the Yale Repertory season. As the play's director, Wojewodski has crafted a comely and congenial evening of theater; as the Rep's artistic director, he ought to have known better. Candida very nearly bears the same strengths and weaknesses as the Liz Diamond directed production of Shaw's Mrs. Warren's Profession, which graced the Rep stage two seasons ago, and the Wojewodski helmed First Lady, which kicked off last year's program. All three plays featured meticulous direction, expert performances, luscious design, and a nagging air of soullessness or shallowness underneath all the pretty trappings. While this hollowness proved quite pardonable in First Lady (after all,who wants profoundin a screwball comedy?), Wojewodski ought to have learned his lesson by now.

Candida bustles along on the wave of Shaw's wit, the strength of the actors, and the remarkable command of set, light, and costume elements. It elicits laughs on the funny lines and hushes at the climactic moments and applause at the curtain call. It's charming, refined, and bland as a bowl of porridge.

Wojewodski has done a first-rate job of communicating Shaw's cleverness. Furthermore, the evocation of the mores and customs of the period is so complete and unforced that the 1895 parlor room becomes instantaneously familiar and accessible. Would that the same could be said for the characters who populate the stage picture. Wojewodski's peculiar weakness seems to be a great difficulty in evoking adequate depth or resonance in the emotional lives of his characters. One can understand, intellectually, what the persons on stage think and feel, but one is given little reason to care. This seems a particular danger in Shaw, wherein the delightfulness of the lines can so easily serve to cloak the heart of the character speaking them. This tends to render the plays brittle and dry.

Candida, published as one of Shaw's "Plays Pleasant," concerns a love triangle between the Revererend James Mavor Morell, his wife Candida, and her youthful admirer Eugene Marchbanks. The Reverend, played with energy and decorousness by James McDonnell, is a thoroughly well-intentioned man of ideas and ideals. Eloquent in speech, tireless in work and eager to improve the community, he offers much to admire. Nevertheless, he is, as Shaw says, "a great baby, pardonably vain of his powers and unconsciously pleased with himself." Marchbanks, the competitor for Candida's affections, played with a fevered boyishness by Alan Tudyk, is a nervous, cracking-voiced poet of 18, much given to high-flown speech and sudden frights. Yet, despite his excess of agitation, he possesses a keen and decisive insight into the events and people surrounding him. For Shaw, interestingly, it is the poet who is the realist.

The consummate realist of the piece, however, is the eponymous Candida, a young wife and mother and the supposed prize of the men's struggle. As Candida, Kathleen McNenny invests her performance with grace, serenity and enviable clear-sightedness. She tolerates the men's fervor and silliness until, in a wrenching scene, she forces each to bid for her affections. The scene is a wonder and its last moments occur in a manner distinctly different from the rest of the play. As the men bid, one sees, finally, the weakness behind Morrel's strength, the strength behind Marchbank's weakness, and the compassion and understanding Candida has for both. It's an extraordinary moment, quite at odds from the rest of the play and more compelling than all the rest put together. It had a terrific immediacy which transcended any dryness or period feel--after all, a heart laid open in 1895 resembles a heart laid open today. Though this sort of abject honesty can only occur at the denouement, it left one wishing that the previous acts had been less polite and mannered.

As an Artistic Director, Wojewodski should beware the impulse to produce too many such revivals. Though they are pleasant and pretty, and unlikely to provoke dissent in the ranks of subscribers, their innocuousness can, over time, add up to real harm. There ought to be a compelling reason for reviving, some unmistakable chord of resonance that overcomes distance, links the period with the contemporary, and begs to be elucidated. Without this resonance, without a real ability to communicate smething more than wit and charm, even the most energetic revival can hope to be little more than a still life. And a theater which continues to present them will resemble nothing so much as a museum.

Back to A&E...