J. PERCY SMITH
This book deals with the work of Christopher Newton as Artistic Director of the Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lake. It provides a sketch of Newton's earlier life and theatrical experience, followed by a consideration of aspects of Shavian theatre and Newton's approach to it, then mainly a descriptive discussion of seven of Shaw's plays as produced and directed by Newton at the Festival between 1980 and 1990.
The book concludes by calling Newton "at his best ... a Shavian revisionist of surrealist daring"; or, if not always that, "at least a new Traditionalist." Whatever "New Traditionalism" may or may not be, the words that recur most strongly in this book, with the ideas that adhere to them, are "revisionist" and "surrealist."
I take it that any imaginative director who sees and probes elements in a play that have previously gone unnoticed, and by dealing with them challenges conventional views of it, may properly be called a "revisionist." One's fundamental concern must be with the basis of the revisionism: which view of a given play-its text, its elements of character and action, its themes and attitudes-guides the revisionist director? Here Garebian falters beyond recovery. His second chapter, entitled "Shavian Surrealism," is introduced by Newton's comment on his early experience in directing Shaw-whom he had approached with long-held but mistaken distaste: "I knew that there was more to Shaw than I had ever dreamed of: surreal, resonant, troubling. A look beneath the surface and I glimpsed unimagined demons." Again, "He creates a world that goes beyond the realistic ... It's very deep and large and it's why I call him a surrealist." Garebian finds here the clue to Shaw as well as to Newton's treatment of him: Shaw is a surrealist and so is Newton.
There was (and is) a surrealist approach to theatre rooted in the early twentieth-century avant-garde movement in France. Yet surrealism found its most comfortable home in the visual arts, and one notes with interest how much emphasis Garebian places on Cameron Porteous' designs as he discusses Newton's productions. It is all the more interesting to come on Porteous' own comment: "Maybe it's not surrealist in the true sense of the word, but certainly there's a heightened sense of reality in the way [Shaw] uses his language and how he pitches his ideas about."
This comment takes us back to Newton's account of his use of the word: "resonant, troubling . . . beyond the realistic . . . deep and large"-and so on. And the real failure of this book is that Garebian never goes beyond language of that sort to tell the reader what distinctive quality makes Shaw and Newton's directing of him-surrealist, or indeed what are the distinctive qualities of the two, surrealist or not. At one point the author admits the problem: . . we can get to Shaw's surrealism through Blake, Nietzsche, Marx, and Wagner, rather than through Jarry, Apollinaire, and Breton." To say that is to say nothing- or everything. Or if one must find a label, use the one that Chesterton was perhaps the first to apply to GBS, calling him "a complete and colossal mystic." For mysticism implies a profoundly religious sense of humanity and the cosmos, and it was such a sense that underlay everything that Shaw wrote: not beyond the possibility or need of revision, and often not susceptible of rational analysis ("The unconscious self is the real genius," he wrote). It called for both daring and faith. It is the nature of that faith, and of Newton's perception of it, that, Garebian fails to consider.
As a result, his chapters on particular productions tend to compromise descriptions of Porteous' designs and the performances of individual actors and actresses, with little vigorous probing of Newton's underlying directorial perceptions. He quotes Margery Morgan's remark that the shadow of The Bacchae is over Misalliance, yet when he comes to Major Barbara, where The Bacchae is linked with the legend of Saint Barbara to provide a decidedly more specific and overt influence, he ignores the fact. Further, what relation do such matters bear to Newton's revisionism and surrealism?
Perhaps the book is merely premature. I find it reassuring that when Garebian asked Newton recently his opinion of his controversial treatment of the Epilogue to Saint Joan (1980), the reply was, "Now that I trust Shaw more, I have no answer on that one." It may not be impertinent to say "Lord, increase his faith." One admires Newton's readiness to go out on a limb-yet precisely because of that readiness, one wants the limb to be resilient and the tree well-rooted.
While I have not seen all of his productions, or taken notes as Garebian has done, let me also say that I write unashamedly as one of those academics at whom Garebian scoffs frequently-and whom he relies on for enlightened quotation, also frequently.