Shakespeare, Shaw & Co.(theater production)(Brief Article)

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, with its tree-lined streets and turn-of- the-last-century architecture, is an obligatory stop for busloads of garden-club members and Japanese tourists. The Prince of Wales Hotel is named for an earlier visitor, the future King Edward VII. And for the past four decades, Niagara has drawn growing numbers of theatergoers to its summer festival, dedicated to George Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries-which, given GBS's longevity, encompasses quite a slice of 19th- and 20th-century theater. The Shaw Festival turns 40 next year, and for more than half its life it has been under the direction of Christopher Newton, who will step down at the end of this season.

The Shaw did plenty of fine things before Newton took over, but he expanded it tremendously, in terms of size and, more importantly, range. He rediscovered authors who had been forgotten for decades- Harley Granville-Barker, for instance, who proves to be somewhere between a Shaw without the puppet strings, and a Galsworthy with wit. Another rediscovery is Oscar Wilde-not forgotten, to be sure, but thought of as the author of one brittle and brilliant play, The Importance of Being Earnest. Whenever Wilde tries to go beneath the surface, the capsule criticism had it, as in Lady Windermere's Fan, An Ideal Husband, and A Woman of No Importance, he plunges into melodrama. In fact, by playing them absolutely straight, Newton and his team have found the real drama in these melodramas, without losing an ounce of the cleverness.

That is the key: play it straight. The Festival has succeeded by turning away from our era's reflexive irony and meeting the works on their own terms. Its few failures have come when it has ignored this precept and, for example, played Saint Joan as what one reviewer called "Saint Joan of Bosnia," or turned Peter Pan into Mick Jagger.

This last season of Newton's is less ambitious than some, but there are two fine Shaw plays, comparative rarities-Fanny's First Play, in which a tart, a suffragette, a butler, a French officer, and the boy-next- door trade Shavian social commentaries, to the bewilderment of their middle-class elders; and The Millionairess, based just loosely enough on Shaw's friend Lady Astor to avoid losing her friendship. And then there is The Man Who Came to Dinner, Kaufman and Hart's tale of a 1930s radio superstar, Sheridan Whiteside, stranded in the wilds of Ohio.

Whiteside starts out as a perfect monster, outrageously rude to his hosts, his loyal secretary, and his doctor and nurse. Gradually, through his conversations, by phone and in person, with his worldwide network of friends and proteges, ranging from Gertrude Stein to a trio of prisoners, we realize that what he is is a witty, charming overgrown two-year-old, whose understanding of friendship boils down to: Want! Love you! Give me! Many fine comedians have been afraid to play Whiteside to the hilt, but the Shaw's Michael Ball fits into his skin so perfectly that even if you've seen Ball in dozens of other roles (including the effete aesthete Waldo Lydecker in this year's mystery, Laura) it is hard to remember that he is acting.

-- Halfway across southern Ontario, the Stratford ...