In Good King Charles’s Golden Days
By George Bernard Shaw
Directed by Eda Holmes
Featuring Benedict Campbell, Graeme Somerville, Ric Reid, Laurie Paton, and others
At the Shaw Festival until October 9
By Matt McGeachy
In Good King Charles’s Golden Days is charmingly subtitled “a true story that never happened,” and to be blunt, we would all have been better off if this production had never happened at all. It’s one of those rare moments in the theatre where even a young critic such as myself gets giddy with malicious glee, believing the production to be so horrible that it will finally, finally provide that Addison De Witt moment we all crave: the permission to tear a production to shreds with a cold glint in the eye and acid rolling off the tongue. This feeling, close to sublime in the first fifteen minutes of the Shaw Festival’s dreadful production, quickly and disappointingly gives way to utter boredom, followed by resignation that one is losing three hours of one’s life with nothing to show for it.
The unlikely premise of the show is that King Charles II of England (formerly the Bonnie Prince) drops by unannounced to pay a visit on Isaac Newton, busy working, alternatively, on formulating his various laws of thermodynamics and decoding the mysteries of the Bible for alchemical secrets that will lead to the discovery of the philosopher’s stone, unlocking the key to everlasting youth. It so happens that His Majesty pops by at just the same time as George Fox, the founder of the Religious Society of Friends, who in this production is played by Ric Reid with such anger and sourness that one wonders how he would have possibly been able to attract a following of any kind, let alone guide others to their inner light.
As if this unlikely meeting was not quite enough, in quick succession three of the King’s mistresses show up, causing great stress to Newton’s impertinent housekeeper Mrs. Basham, who in the hands of Mary Haney missed every comedic step she took. The mistresses are: Nell Gwynn, a saucy but talentless actress played with very great talentlessness by Nicola Correia-Damude; Barbara Villiers, Duchess of Cleveland, whom the King constantly threatened to throw down a flight of stairs, and, as played by Claire Jullien, we wished he would have; and Lisa Codrington’s the Duchess of Portsmouth, whose French accent would have made a French whore blush with dishonesty.
I wish I could say that hilarity ensued, but nothing close to it did. In fact, nothing really ensued. Shaw’s lazy, indulgent writing was nothing more than a vehicle to convey his encyclopedic knowledge of English history and his particular point of political view, and it led to lazy, indulgent direction by Eda Holmes, and lazy, bad acting from the entire company. The entire third act, a conversation about the difficulties of kingship between Charles and his Queen Catherine, was incongruous and could have been lopped off the end of the show, saving us all time and boredom. It should be noted here that Laurie Paton, who usually plays the Queen, was absent this performance and Claire Jullien filled in.
Benedict Campbell phoned his King Charles in from the theatre next door, but with a cast filled with duds and a clearly visionless director, can one blame him? Somerville’s Newton was the closest to a decent performance in the show, but the lack of conviction among any of the actors makes it difficult to call it acting. There is a distinct difference between acting and simply putting on a show.
Ending with a pleasant note, technically the production was quite stunning. Camellia Koo’s set design was sumptuous, and Michael Gianfrancesco’s period costumes were very fetching. But this does not compensate for the lack of acting and lazy direction of a particular work by Shaw that, after seeing this performance, I’m convinced ought never be produced, regardless of your Festival’s mandate.
