Born Yesterday
By Garson Kanin
Directed by Gina Wilkinson
Featuring Deborah Hay, Thom Marriott, Gray Powell, and others
At the Shaw Festival until November 1
By Matt McGeachy
Oh, the days when a mere millionaire could buy his way through the U.S. Congress! Today, a cool million is what it takes to get your foot in the door, and it certainly isn’t enough to buy the influence of a U.S. Senator, who, I understand, does not come cheap. But these halcyon days are the subject of Garson Kanin’s comedic play Born Yesterday at the Shaw Festival.
Harry Brock (Thom Marriott) is a Jersey-born junkyard king who made millions selling scrap and junk to be recycled for the war effort and is interesting in keep certain European tariffs low so he can go and ravage the fields of Europe for junk to sell to their various governments, too. In order to get what he wants, Brock has “bought” himself a senator, Norval Hedges, played by the excellent Lorne Kennedy, who promises to roll the bill through to keep everything in order for Brock.
Brock is too brash and uncouth for the smooth corruption of Washington, but his girlfriend Billie Day (Deborah Hay) is about as dumb as Harry is mean. By chance, Harry meets Paul Verrall (Gray Powell), an idealistic — and perhaps socialistic — reporter from the New Republic, assigned to write a profile on him, and hires Verrall to tutor Billie. This decision has unexpected consequences for Brock, not least of which is a minor romance between Verrall and Billie. Proving to be a devoted learner, soon the beautiful hotel suite Billie and Brock share is filled with books and Verrall and Billie discuss all matter of lofty ideas; one of her books is, rather unsubtly, The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine.
Before long, too much learning proves to be a bad thing for Brock when Billie starts to ask questions about all the papers she has to sign in a scheme, it turns out, to launder money through her as the owner of a majority of Brock’s junkyards. The ensuing confrontation, despite the rather clumsy staging of a few stage slaps, proves to be emotionally difficult to watch.
Every actor in this show has a flushed, well-developed character that is delightful to watch. Thom Marriott’s Brock is brash and mean and certainly uncouth, but Marriott never takes things too far into caricature such that we form an emotional connection with Brock, a self-made man who is ignorant, for sure, and definitely a bastard, but not a monster. Gray Powell’s Verrall is glib and arrogant but compelling, and Deborah Hay’s Billie Day, by far the most cartoonish character of the lot, remains believable while milking the laughs. The most heartbreaking character is Patrick Galligan’s Ed Devery, once Assistant Attorney-General and now a heavy drinking lackey of Brock, one can see the pathos in his face and hear the despair in his voice even as he participates in what he knows is wrong. Fallen from grace, he is unable to face himself and hides behind booze.
My only complaint about the show is that the writing takes a bit of a left turn in the third act, becoming a little heavy handed and familiar to all the lefties out in the audience. There is nothing wrong with lefty theatre, of course, but it has to be consistent with the whole play so as not to stick out like a red left hand. This is not a criticism of this fine production, but rather of the script itself. In the hands of director Gina Wilkinson and this fine ensemble of actors, the whole effect is a very entertaining night at the theatre.
