Stratford Ends Its Season On A High Note with The Beaux Stratagem:

Photo: Michael Cooper

STRATFORD — We’re only minutes into the Stratford Festival’s splendid revival of George Farquhar’s 1707 comedy, The Beaux Stratagem when we’re presented with the first of many sublimely funny moments.

Mike Shara (extreme right of the photo)  one of those rare actors who can wear fancy dress with confidence, is an amiable opportunist named Aimwell whose mission in life is to find and marry a wealthy heiress. At this moment, he’s in an inn and brooking danger to his health by sampling a flagon of the local ale. Shara’s reaction to his first taste of this lethal brew is all flaying limbs and gasping, gulping horror — yet it’s carried out with the kind of spontaneity that underlines this fine actor’s mastery of physical comedy.

But this is only one reason the scene works so beautifully. Shara, a festival headliner, is sharing the scene with Robert King who’s having a field day as an engaging scoundrel of a innkeeper. And King, wonderful in the part, is one of those often unheralded Stratford actors who over the years has helped ensure the festival company its essential spine of excellence.

But the scene is also a portent of the genial, warm-hearted production to come and of the high ensemble achievement that will be on display. As a playwright, George Farquhar was too fond of his characters, too benevolent in his view of his world, to offer the cutting comedy of some of his Restoration contemporaries. But The Beaux Stratagem nonetheless reveals a perceptive social observer for whom the upper classes were but one component of his dramatic tapestry. The play has its share of rogues and scoundrels and posturing fops and prancing ninnies — but Antoni Cimolino’s production never loses touch with the material’s kindly, tolerant disposition.

Mike Shara and a quick-witted Colm Feore, portraying another impoverished gold digger named Archer, are the evening’s mainstays, working together with the dexterity of two fingers on a single hand. Feore has charm to burn when he’s handed a role like this one, also a lightness of touch that makes his pursuit of Lucy Peacock’s Mrs. Sullen an ongoing delight.

Farquhar’s plot has its tangled moments, but no matter. The Beaux Stratagem has endured because of its wonderful gallery of characters and because of a succession of deftly constructed comic set pieces. Cimolino and his cast build on these strengths, their efforts complemented by the burnished beauty of Patrick Clark’s designs for the Festival Theatre stage, and by composer Berthold Carriere’s engaging music.

Lucy Peacock’s feisty portrayal of Mrs. Sullen reveals a woman who may be locked into a terrible marriage with a drunken boor but who still retains a genuine sense of her own worth — especially in an England ruled by a female — while remaining susceptible to the amorous overtures of Archer. Bethany Jillard brings both warmth and innocence to the character of Mrs. Sullen’s sister Dorinda: her sweetness of disposition helps transform Shara’s Aimwell from an opportunist into a lover. And then there is Martha Henry, wonderful as the homeopathic Lady Bountiful, dispensing her herbs to the afflicted with iron-rod conviction and also giving the evening its best sight gag when the bad guys invade her property.

More bouquets are in order for a shambling, snuffling Scott Wentworth, an appalling delight as Mrs. Sullen’s boor of a husband, and Gordon Miller, terrific as a twitchy servant named Scrub. This production rightly revels in the play’s wonderfully drawn characters. And in the process, the fabric of a memorable world is being woven firmly into shape. In brief, a fine conclusion to Stratford’s 2014 season.

(The Beaux Stratagem continues to Oct. 15. Further information at 1 800 567 1600 or stratfordfestival.ca)

Reviewed by Jamie Portman