Shaw Magazine

Shaw Magazine is a publication of the Shaw Festival, issued four times a year for Members. Enjoy these selected articles from current and past issues.

Summer 2008

The Charming Mr Williams
“It doesn’t reflect well on me, of course,” Blair Williams grins, “but I had little trouble finding myway into playing Eustace. Villains are fun to play; there are always angles to slip and slide around,and this is awonderful role in a terrific play.” Blair is talking about his role as Eustace Gaydon, the husband of The Stepmother, and in the words of playwright Githa Sowerby, “a rather charming man.”

Isn't it Rich?
Stephen Sondheim’s fifteenth Broadway musical project, Passion, was poised to open in 1994. An article in New York magazine acknowledged this milestone. Entitled “The Cult of Saint Stephen Sondheim,” it posed the question: ‘is Sondheim God?’ Certainly Sondheim’s works are esteemed with an almost religious reverence. Each compilation, tribute, new creation, unearthed cut song, and revival is met with a devoted fervor from his following. What is it that prompts this zeal?

Back to the South
As I started to do research for The Little Foxes, I felt compelled to visit Demopolis. Although I had grown up in the South, I have been away for the better part of my adult life. I wanted to go back and eat grits and see if anything of Lillian’s family remained. David Jansen, who plays the role of Horace in the Shaw production of The Little Foxes, and for whom “grits” conjures only “the Liberal Party of Canada,” was determined to research his character, and joined me on my mission.

Winter 2008

All Over Town
Wonderful Town is such a joyful, smart and appealing musical – from the story of the two idealistic sisters who are searching for fame and fortune, to the bohemian setting and lively characters of Greenwich Village, from the snap and life of the lyrics to the memorable music of Leonard Bernstein, it is like walking into sunshine! It’s hard to believe that such a lighthearted creation came out of anything but an upbeat process – however some of the most illustrious successes only appear after much struggle. Here Robert Hetherington shares with us the fascinating history of how Wonderful Town came to be.

What We Might Have Been
The casualty estimate for World War I, both military and civilian, was over 40 million – 20 million deaths and 21 million wounded. This includes 9.7 million military deaths and about 10 million civilian deaths. The Entente Powers lost more than 5 million soldiers and the Central Powers about 4 million. Then just a few short years later, World War II began, and racked up an even more impressive list; roughly 72 million. The civilian toll was around 47 million, including 20 million deaths due to war-related famine and disease. So it was a stunned and exhausted world that received John Boynton Priestley’s newest play, An Inspector Calls.

The Story Behind The Stepmother
Our 2008 season brochure describes our production of The Stepmother as the “premiere of a play written in 1924,” meaning that the play has not been produced in the eighty-four years since it was written. It sounds difficult to believe that a play written by Githa Sowerby, who wrote the extraordinarily moving and intelligent Rutherford and Son (produced at The Shaw in 2004), could have gone unproduced for so long. How did this happen? That story is almost as interesting as the play itself.