The Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario; tickets here.
This past weekend I saw not one, but two one-of-a-kind performances at the Shaw Festival, as the company scrambled to fulfil its schedule.
Of the five shows I attended, only two had the original cast intact, because COVID and other illnesses are raging through the company.
Generally speaking, there is usually an A Team and a B Team (and sometimes a C Team in big shows like musicals). If the original actor can’t go on, the understudy takes over. For example, the performance I saw of Sherlock Holmes and The Mystery of The Human Heart featured two understudies, while I was told that My Fair Lady had five replacements.
What happens, however, when you run out of actors?
What follows are two examples of what I call creative casting solutions by the Shaw Festival that allowed the show to go on.
The matinee performance of Candida by Bernard Shaw (Royal George)
The stage manager came out to announce that not only was actor Claire Jullien ill, but so was her understudy, Gabriella Sundar Singh. Thus, to fill the role of Miss Proserpine Garnett, actor Marla McLean had graciously agreed to step in.
I can’t begin to say how huge this is. McLean is not a young newbie. Now in her 18th season, she is one of the Shaw’s leading ladies, and is currently heading the cast of Witness for the Prosecution.
Yet here she was, script in hand, with blocking hurriedly hand written in, appearing in a production, so said the stage manager, of a production she had never seen. Apparently McLean did have a chance in the morning to go over some of the more intense scenes with the actors, but essentially, it was a cold reading.
As proof that professionalism pays off, McLean kept up with pacing and was very discreet in how she carried the script. More to the point, she managed to capture the tight and crusty personality of Prossie, English accent and all.
The performance was more than credible, and the show was saved. The audience gave McLean a thunderous ovation, as did her fellow actors who sent her out for a special bow.
The evening performance of Cotton Club (Spiegeltent)
Last year, the festival imported a 100-year-old spiegeltent from Belgium for the first time. Shaw artistic director Tim Carroll intended this intimate space to be both a stage for concerts and for experimentation, and this tradition has carried on into this season with five different productions.
As I understand it, Cotton Club was meant to be an hour and a half long show, with intermission, featuring songs that originated at this legendary Harlem, New York based nightclub, interspersed with narration about its background and performers.
That is not the show I saw.
Two of the five member cast, Alana Bridgewater and Elodie Gillett, were understudies for The Secret Garden that evening, so Cotton Club could not be performed as was.
The solution? Cotton Club’s director (and Shaw Festival associate artistic director) Kimberley Rampersad stepped in to both sing and perform a soft shoe tap routine (despite having had a hip replaced last December).
New music was added, and the now four cast members (that included Tat Austrie, Graeme Kitagawa and Jeremiah Sparks) managed to cobble together a nearly hour long, song and dance revue to please the almost sold out audience.
Final thoughts on creative casting solutions
Let’s look at why the Shaw Festival can’t cancel a show.
In the main, many members of the audience have travelled to Niagara-on-the-Lake from somewhere else. It’s not as if they are in their own city and can catch an alternate performance. In other words, it is incumbent upon the festival to find a solution, and in two cases during my weekend stay, they did.
It also says something about the depth of the ranks that the festival can draw on, both in terms of actors and directors, who can fill the holes.
Am I disappointed at not seeing the original Cotton Club? Yes I am, but I was treated to an entertaining enough show, albeit on the short side.
As for Marla McLean stepping into Candida? That was a fascinating performance to watch as she tried to seamlessly insert herself into the cast, and for the most part, succeeded.
So, I witnessed two one-of-a-kind productions at the Shaw Festival, and I just happened to be there.
The show must go on, and it did.
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