The Shaw Festival The basics: Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario; 45th season. A colorful, large-format, 68-page festival booklet, including play descriptions, schedules of performances and other events, plus a lengthy visitors guide, is available from the Shaw Festival, Box 774, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada L0S 1J0; 1-800-511-7429; or visit www.shawfest.com. Tickets: Prices range from CDN $25-$86 (U.S. $23-$78) according to theater, location, day of week and play; there are many discounts. Schedule: "Arms and the Man" (through Oct. 29); "High Society" (through Nov. 19); "The Heiress" (through Oct. 7); "Design for Living" (through Nov. 18); "Too True to Be Good" (through Oct. 7); Chekhov, "Love Among the Russians" (through Sept. 24). Related story For survey of full Shaw Festival season, see Shaw, Stratford festivals resonate (5/21/06)

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE, Ontario -- Of the two great Ontario repertory theater companies, it's the Shaw Festival toward which I feel the greater affection. I admire the grander flights of Stratford, but the Shaw feels homier, more accessible.

It has the advantage of proximity -- it's just a five-hour drive, two hours less than Stratford. Most important, the Shaw has greater intimacy, with the largest of its three theaters smaller than the two largest of Stratford's four.

Then there's programming. Stratford, to appropriate Dr. Johnson, takes an "extensive view, survey[ing] mankind, from China to Peru." In contrast, the Shaw tills more intensively a smaller field, concentrating on the century of Shaw's lifetime (roughly 1850-1950) and on more modern plays set in or which deal with that period.

So a Shaw season is more likely to set up interesting or even poignant juxtapositions. This year, five of the six shows I've seen (out of the 10 on offer) focus on a woman making the difficult choice of a mate, and four of the other shows have a lot to say about marriage, as well.

That may not sound like a compelling thematic interest, but in individual cases it's quite poignant: compare Raina in "Arms and the Man" to Gilda in "Design for Living," and Gilda to her contemporary, Tracy Lord, in "High Society" -- with Catherine Sloper in "The Heiress" as a tragic alternative. Or consider Philip Barry and Cole Porter as America's answer to Noel Coward.

There are many such cross-play debates. But there's also the sugar-cute town of Niagara-on-the-Lake to envelop and disarm any intellectual stress in the glow of gingerbready comfort.

David Cooper photos Mike Shara as Sergius and Diana Donnelly as Raina in "Arms and the Man." Click photo for larger image.

"Arms and the Man"
This season's mainstage Shaw comedy finds the garrulous iconoclast at his most playful. But he is serious, too, and as always, surprisingly contemporary. Here he is in 1894, debunking the idealisms of war, which reverberates with recent revelations about American forces in Iraq -- although, since the setting is the Balkans, it echoed current events even more painfully when the Shaw last staged it in 1994.

But "Arms" is most robustly about love, sex and class. Raina has to choose between the hollow but good-natured posturing of Sergius and the matter-of-fact competence of Bluntschili, the Swiss, an early example of Shaw's Superman. That Bluntschili has the materialist advantage makes her choice easy, but to his credit, Sergius plays fair with the servant girl, Louka, and the life force triumphs over class stratification.

Shaw artistic director Jackie Maxwell directs with some vivacity on a Sue LePage set lovely with moss greens, burnished golds, russet and orange, dusted with the spirit of the east and the vision of Klimt.

Leading the comedy is the florid foolishness of Mike Shara's very fine Sergius, who combines funny physical languor with statuesque petulance. Patrick Galligan's Bluntschili, however, takes too long to come into his own; and I wish Diana Donnelly's showed more of the comic sparkle and invention as Raina that she lavishes on "Love Among the Russians." Old pros Peter Hutt and Nora McLellan are an interesting pair as Raina's parents.

Left to right: Graeme Somerville as Otto, Nicole Underhay as Gilda and David Jansen as Leo in "Design for Living." Click photo for larger image.

"Design for Living"
Like "Private Lives," Noel Coward's 1933 "Design for Living" zeroes in on the incompatibility of passion and the day-to-day, complicating that with the polymorphous perversity of sexuality. Gilda and artist Otto love each other, but so do Gilda and playwright Leo and, although they may not be ready to announce it to their world, so do Leo and Otto. What is everyone to do?

That's a sort of synopsis of the first two acts, set respectively in Paris and London, wherein Coward arranges his plot parallels very wittily. Then he surprises us with an Act 3 in New York, where Gilda has opted for a deadly marriage of convenience with Ernest, an art dealer whose parasitic profession echoes his voyeuristic affections.

An abstract rear wall backed by the Eiffel Tower, Big Ben and the Chrysler Building, all akimbo in turns, suggests these splintered lives. The decoration includes an ebony chinoiserie drinks cabinet to die for and Gilda's many pretty '30s costumes, including a stunning pale gray pants dress and blue robe in Act 3 and hats throughout as cute as Nicole Underhay's dimples.

I would have thought Underhay, who last year was a teenager in "You Never Can Tell," too young for Gilda, but that adds pathos. Graeme Somerville's Otto and especially David Jansen's Leo lack the glamour we expect. Lorne Kennedy lets us see just how awful Ernest is, and Jane Johanson's servant is one of those eccentric Coward surprises.

Otto, Leo and Gilda are artists who fear they've sold out. Dare they sell out their personal lives, as well? Otto and Leo clearly opt to be a gay couple, but they want Gilda, too, and she wants them. That they decide to create an impossible trio may just be a comic ending, but it has social and personal poignancy, too. Though long at nearly three hours, this is a better play now than when Coward wrote it.

Camilla Scott as Tracy Lord and Ensemble in "High Society." Click photo for larger image.

"High Society"
Philip Barry may not equal Coward, but he's in his league, and Cole Porter is more than a match for Coward the songwriter. Theirs is an odd collaboration. Barry's 1939 stage comedy "The Philadelphia Story" became a popular Katharine Hepburn movie and after Barry died served as the basis for "High Society," a movie musical with a Porter score.

Playwright Arthur Kopit drew on all these versions for this 1997 adaptation, for which he had free run of the Porter songbook, using lyrics neatly tweaked by Susan Birkenhead. The result is good enough that I don't see why it closed so quickly on Broadway in 1998. It is certainly a large undertaking for the Shaw, which has usually specialized in small musicals, but with a total cast of just 19, director Kelly Robinson and company give it the energy and color to fill the big Festival Theatre stage.

The individual leads aren't as strong as the overall production. Camilla Scott's Tracy has an erratic voice, Dan Chameroy's Dexter is like an overgrown prep school boy and their accents are a mystery. Much stronger work comes from Sharry Flett (Mrs. Lord), Dinah Lord (Melissa Peters) -- the Puck of the company -- and Neil Barclay (Uncle Willie).

Diana Donnelly as Natalya and Martin Happer as Ivan in "Love Among the Russians." Click photo for larger image.

"Love Among the Russians"
If I were in Niagara-on-the-Lake tomorrow and could see just one show, this 60-minute gem would be it. Director Eda Holmes has paired two short Chekhov farces, framing them with songs of love, languishing and otherwise, which turns even the set change into an engaging interlude.

In "The Bear," an angry man (Blair Williams) demands payment of a debt from a self-indulgent widow, still mourning her long-dead husband. In the resulting battle royal, fury turns to passion. In "The Proposal," a wimpy young landowner (Martin Happer) keeps getting sidetracked as he tries to propose to his neighbor's daughter.

The wonder of this is the double act of William Vickers as a put-upon servant and then the irascible father, and especially Diana Donnelly as the glittering, self-dramatizing widow and then the romping farm girl. The latter is as funny a female portrait as I've recently seen. I regret only the excessive contemporary slang of Morwyn Brebner's adaptation of "The Bear," but laughter cancels all kvetches.

Michael Ball as Doctor Sloper and Tara Rosling as Catherine Sloper in "The Heiress." Click photo for larger image.

"The Heiress"
A popular Shaw attraction for many years was its annual mystery, but the material was rarely very good and it died a necessary death. But "The Heiress," Ruth and Augustus Goetz's 1947 adaptation of Henry James' 1880 novella "Washington Square," is a mystery of a higher kind, a mystery of human motivation, desire and revenge.

Joseph Ziegler capably directs Tara Rosling as Catherine Sloper, the shy daughter of a wealthy, demanding father (the always excellent Michael Ball), who is courted, then jilted, then courted again by Mike Shara's Morris Townsend. Rosling's careful performance is content to show ripples where Cherry Jones' 1995 Broadway performance intimated tidal forces, but she is still very affecting, and Shara neatly balances the romantic hero and opportunistic cad.

Blair Williams as Aubrey and Nicole Underhay as The Servant in "Too True To Be Good." Click photo for larger image.

"Too True to Be Good"
Shaw's little-known, late (1932) comedy is a kind of primer of many issues, a prophecy of a world tumbling into a disastrous future. Although a philosophic comedy, its mode is surreal and its subject matter serious, making it in many ways more modern than Coward's and Barry's plays in the same decade. Pretty good for a 75 year old iconoclast.

In his author's note, Shaw characterizes it as a farce followed by a comedy followed by "a torrent of sermons." He's not far wrong. But the substance of the result (more than I can even summarize here) is suggested by some of its casts: Leo G. Carroll, Bea Lillie and Claude Rains (U.S. premiere); Cedric Hardwicke, Ralph Richardson and Donald Wolfit (London premiere); and Judi Dench and Ian McKellen (RSC 1975).

Here, Jim Mezon directs a typically strong Shaw ensemble cast, including Andrew Bunker as Private Meek, the character based on Shaw's friend, Lawrence of Arabia.

Post-Gazette Theater Tour: There may still be space on the PG Shaw Festival trip, Sept. 12-15; 412-441-3131.