by Deirdre Donovan

 

The Actors Theatre Company (TACT) and the Gingold Theatrical Group (GTG) join hands and mount George Bernard Shaw first play Widowers’ Houses.   Under the direction of the GTG’s Artistic Director David Staller, this is a rare opportunity to see Shaw’s maiden play staged with meticulous care.

 

The program’s cover neatly sums Widowers’ Houses as a “comedy about sex, greed, and real estate.”  It is.  But it also is a sermon, a romance, and a stinging critique of housing for the poor. And, according to Staller in his very illuminating program note, Shaw effected a sea change in modern English drama with this play.  Unlike his contemporary playwrights, Shaw daringly turned to the pressing social inequalities of his day and artfully incorporated them into his work.

 

Jeremy Beck and Jonathan Hadley in Widowers' Houses. Photo by Marielle Solan.

 

While the play draws on the conventions of romantic comedy, the plot reversals and social themes are altogether Shaw’s.  It takes place in 1900, on a terrace of a hotel and restaurant at Remagen on the Rhine (with our twenty-twenty hindsight of World War II and the famous Battle of Remagen, the locale gains an interesting historic patina); and it later shifts to the drawing room of the Sartorius home on Bedford Square, London.

 

In the opening scene, the protagonist Doctor Harry Trench, an aristocratic doctor of modest financial means, becomes engaged to the young heiress Blanche, the young daughter of the wealthy businessman Sartorius.  The proud Trench, very much set on being his own man, informs Blanche that he wants to remain financially independent from his future father-in-law.  However, his fiancée Blanche, accustomed to the finer things in life, tries to persuade Trench (who earns 700 pounds a year) that he should surrender his pride and accept her father’s money following their marriage, if not for himself, for her sake.  Trench and Blanche’s discussion over her father’s money heats up, and with no agreement between them on fiscal matters, their engagement is broken off.  Disillusioned, Trench becomes even more so when he learns that Sartorius has earned his fortune by bullying rent from the poor who live in his ramshackle housing in London.  The rest of the play see-saws between what characters think is morally right and wrong, with principals pointing their righteous fingers at each other, and ultimately realizing that curing social ills is easier said than done.

 

 Jonathan Hadley, Terry Layman, and Talene Monahan

 

Staller doesn’t disappoint in his staging of Shaw’s apprentice play.  Without attempting to make the piece more than it is, he manages to turn this “unpleasant” play (Shaw grouped his early plays as Plays Pleasant and Unpleasant) into a very pleasant production indeed.  Staller brings out its strong points:  the witty language, the clever plot reversals, and the striking characterization of the strong-minded young woman Blanche.  Blanche, though less celebrated than many of his later female creations, comes across the footlights as a real woman in this play.  True, other characters like Sartorius, the dandy William DeBurgh Cokane, Sartorius’ rent collector Lickcheese, Trench and his off-stage Aunt Maria (a grande dame who plans to “float” her nephew’s future wife in London society) are terrific fun to follow too.  But it is Blanche who is the most watchable character on stage, with her unpredictable temper tantrums, sharp-edged tongue, and clear intelligence.

 

The seven-member acting ensemble is in fine fettle.  Jeremy Beck plays the ambitious Doctor Trench with integrity (and a few telling chinks in his moral armor) through the many twists and turns of the plot.  Terry Layman is right on the money as the doting father and starchy businessman Sartorius.  Jonathan Hadley as Cokane serves up many comic moments as Trench’s affected but well-meaning friend.  Hadley’s Cokane liberally sprinkles his English with French bon mots, mangling a few in his pompous delivery.  John Plumpis, as the aptly-named Lickcheese, is spot-on, remarkably transforming himself from an underling to a gentleman in a happy wink of Midas’ eye.  Talene Monahon clearly holds her own performing the indomitable Blanche.  Her Blanche is no Pollyanna, and goes toe-to-toe with her father and Trench, somehow managing to have the last word in each colloquy with them.

 

No slackers on the creative team.  Brian Prather’s manicured set, in collaboration with Peter West’s clear lighting, looks impeccably right from the first to final scene.  Barbara A. Bell’s period costumes are delicious and immediately will pull you into the turn-of-the-twentieth century.

 

Theatergoers should make it their business to see Widowers’ Houses (written in 1892) at the Beckett Theatre.  It introduces you to Shaw’s journalistic bent as a playwright—and his earliest go at a theater work.  The master would ink over 60 dramatic pieces in toto before he died at the ripe age of 94, becoming a titan of theater, second only to William Shakespeare.  Widowers’ Houses isn’t one of the Irish playwright’s masterpieces.  But it certainly gave Shaw a toehold in drama--and is an astonishing achievement for a first play.

 

Through April 2nd.

At the Beckett Theatre at Theatre Row, 410 W. 42^nd St., Manhattan.

For tickets and more information, phone 212-239-6210 or visit

tickets@telecharge.com.      .

Running time:  2 hours, including one intermission.