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Brian Bedford is Sir Peter and Michelle Giroux
is Lady Teazle in Richard Brinsley Sheridan's
THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL.
Photo Credit: Michael Cooper.
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The School for Scandal
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Staged by Brian Bedford
Based on the 1999 Stratford Festival of Canada Production
Directed by Richard Monette
November 26 through January 21
Chicago Shakespeare Theater
Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand
312-595-5600
THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre is hard, and gem-like. There is no flame, but there is style. This production of Richard Brinsley Sheridan's 1777 play is a restaging of the 1999 Stratford Festival of Canada production, which was directed by Stratford's Artistic Director, Richard Monette. The presentation of this play at the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre inaugurates "The World's Stage" program, which will bring international performances to Chicago audiences.
The play itself, THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL, is perhaps the most famous English language social comedy. It is the ultimate comedy of manners. In this type of play the linchpin of the dramatic plot is the social conventions and customs of a leisured class. Such a social comedy may not appeal to all members of an audience. First, the comic effect of this type of play "demands something like a momentary anesthesia of the heart. Its appeal is to intelligence, pure and simple." Henri Bergson, Laughter, translated by Cloudesley Brereton and Fred Rothwell (Macmillan Company, New York 1911), p. 4. However, there is a distinction between intellectual involvement and indifference. " [I]ndifference is the deadly foe of all comedy." Robert Corrigan, "Comedy and the Comic Spirit," Comedy Meaning and Form (Chandler Publishing Company, Scranton, PA, 1965), p. 5. A comedy of manners works best, evoking laughter, when the audience is not too far removed from the society in the play, either by time and place or by temperament. The middle class audience of the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre may vaguely mirror the eighteenth-century audience of Sheridan's time and therefore may be reflected by the characters in THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. However, I think the connection is too tenuous for a real comic intellectual engagement that "sets up in the audience a sense of general exhilaration, because it presents the very image of 'livingness' and the perception of it is exciting." Suzanne K. Langer, "The Great Dramatic Forms: The Comic Rhythm," Feeling and Form (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1953), p. 347. I believe that THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL does not achieve a comic effect because the subject matter and the action on the stage is merely curious, not exciting, and not allusive to the society of the audience. There were titters during the opening performance; but not comic laughter. Yet, even if the performance of THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL does not evoke Bergson's laughter and Langer's sense of exhilaration, this production is a school for theatre lovers—the performance by the Stratford Festival of Canada is the quintessence of Sheridanism.
The original production of THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL opened on May 8,1777 at the Drury Lane Theatre. The play ran 75 nights the first season and another 261 performances before the year 1800. In 1776, Richard Brinsley Sheridan (1751-1816) had succeeded David Garrick as manager of the Drury Lane, one of the two patent theatres in London.
"The movement for reform of morals and manners which had got underway in the reign of William and Mary become steadily stronger in the early eighteenth century. The reform movement, with the aid of the Licensing Act of 1737, brought about a change of attitude in the plays performed. The Licensing Act empowered the Lord Chamberlain to license all scripts and restricted performances to the two patent theatres (Drury Lane and Covent Garden.)" "Eighteenth Century, Playhouses and their Audiences," British Dramatists from Dryden to Sheridan, edited by George H. Nettleton and Arthur E. Case, revised by George Winchester Stone, Jr. (Southern Illinois University Press, Carbondale, IL, 1969), p. xvi.
Sheridan was both a talented playwright and a savvy businessman. He scripted plays that he knew would appeal to his audience. "An audience satisfied and enthusiastic about the type of plays offered was the basis for a prosperous theatre. The eighteenth-century audience was composed of riotous 'town bucks,' to be sure, but also of a nucleus, after the mid-century, of about 400 regular and frequent spectators, many of them middle-class. This audience of dukes, earls, duchesses, doctors, clergymen, artists, and writers liked to see itself . . . ." " Eighteenth Century, Playhouses and their Audiences," p. xvii.
Sheridan's THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL depicted its audience and their moral values using the popular form of the witty comedy of manners. "[C]omedy becomes purely social in that best known and perhaps best liked of all its higher forms—the comedy of manners. Here we have hardly less than a picture of society itself; here the men and women are but parts of a general whole, . . . . Here the drawing room is not merely the setting of the play . . . but the subject and even the hero; here enter all the prejudices, the traditions, the taboos, the aspirations, the absurdities, the snobberies, of a group." Louis Kronenberger, "Some Prefatory Words on Comedy,: The Thread of Laughter (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1952), p. 7.
While the eighteenth-century London society is the subject matter of THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL, Sheridan's play is crafted as a comedy in terms of plot and characters. In this play, as in most comedies, the movement is from a society peopled by those that are in some type of "mental bondage, who are helplessly driven by ruling passions, neurotic compulsions, social rituals, and selfishness" to a new society that centers around the hero, who is at first an outsider. There is finally a newly integrated society formed on the stage that includes as many as possible from the old society with the hero and heroine. The new society presents a moral norm. Northrop Frye, "The Argument of Comedy, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton University Press, 1957), p. 60.
THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL opens with a full presentation of the the London society that is in the snares of the ritual of scandalmongering. The characters' names emphasis their roles in this society. The first setting is the London home of Lady Sneerwell, who is meeting with Mr. Snake, her agent of destruction of others' reputations. Snake is assisting her and Joseph Surface in severing the growing attachment between Joseph's younger brother Charles Surface, a reputed libertine, and so an outsider, and Maria, the ward of Lady Sneerwell's neighbor, Sir Peter Teazle. Lady Sneerwell is interested in Charles; Joseph is interested in Maria. Joseph is a more appropriate suitor for Maria because he is known as an honorable and trustworthy gentleman. Lady Sneerwell's home is the gathering place for those interested in the latest society news. These gossips include Mrs. Candour, Mr. Crabtree and his nephew, Sir Benjamin Backbite. They report that Joseph and Charles' uncle, Sir Oliver Surface, is on his way back to London after having been in India amassing a fortune.
The next setting is the home of Sir Peter Teazle, Lady Sneerwell's neighbor. Sir Peter is an older man married to a younger wife from the country, who has adopted the ways of the society women. Sir Peter has accepted the society's assessment of Joseph as a gentleman and Charles as a wastrel. Sir Peter's friend, Sir Oliver, who has been away from the society and is not as prone to accept its opinion, decides to test his two nephews. He will offer Charles financial assistance in disguise as a broker and will seek financial assistance from Joseph in disguise as a distant relative.
The next scenes reveal the real Charles and Joseph, at their homes. Accompanied by Moses, a moneylender, Sir Oliver finds Charles at home drinking. Charles seeks his disguised uncle's support by holding himself out to be his heir. Charles offers to sell many items in his house but will not sell an old picture of his uncle. At his home, Joseph Surface tries to gain Maria's affection, but she rebuffs him even though she is disgusted by some of Charles' reputed excesses. Joseph then importunes Lady Teazle to enter into an illicit relationship. While Lady Teazle is still at Joseph's home, her husband arrives. She hides behind a screen. Joseph tells Sir Peter that the hidden visitor is a "French milliner." When Charles arrives unexpectedly to see Joseph, Sir Peter hides in the closet. Upon hearing the ensuing conversation, Sir Peter realizes that he has misjudged Charles. Charles and Peter discover Lady Teazle behind the screen. Sir Peter finally realizes that Joseph is a villain. When Sir Oliver, in his disguise as a poor relation seeking a loan, meets Joseph, he is not impressed with this nephew's lack of charity and insincerity. Sir Oliver decides to support Charles, who then wins Maria's hand in marriage. The Teazles are also reunited. The scandalmongering London society is integrated with the new society formed by the two couples who have true moral values.
Sheridan's comedy of manners is magnificently staged by the Stratford Festival Theatre. The casting is without flaw. Many of the actors are reprising their roles from the 1999 Canada production. Each word, infliction, bit of dialogue, movement is studied and sure and performed with elan. The costumes are scrumptious. The settings depicting the various segments of the society are clever and stunning. The blocking and movement of the actors on the Chicago Shakespeare Theatre's thrust stage, which is skillfully directed by Brian Bedford who also plays Lord Peter, is full of energy and spirit.
THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL did not engage my intellect, or provoke me to laugh; but for a student of the theatre, this production was a wonderous schooling.
--Sandra Marie Lee
THE SCHOOL FOR SCANDAL. Chicago
Shakespeare Theater, Navy Pier, 800 E. Grand,
312-595-5600. Previews through November 25: Friday and
Saturday, 7:30 PM. Opens Sunday, November 26, 5 PM.
Through January 21: Tuesdays, 7:30 PM; Wednesdays, 1 and
7:30 PM; Thursdays, 7:30 PM; Fridays, 8 PM; Saturdays, 4
and 8:30 PM; Sundays, 3 PM; Sunday, December 31, 3 and
8:30 PM; no shows Tuesday, November 28 and December 5,
and Sunday, December 24. $35-$45. The 8:30 PM show on
December 31 is $75 and is followed by a party and fireworks.
The show on Thursday, January 18, is sign interpreted and
audio described.
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