Presented by and at the Pearl Theatre Company, 80 St. Marks Place, NYC, April 10–May 1. Casting associates, Rachel Botchan and Joanne Camp.
Bernard Shaw classified "Widowers' Houses" as one of his "Plays Unpleasant," yet its revival by the Pearl Theatre Company is inescapably, and to some extent inevitably, pleasant. Shaw intended to show "middle-class respectability and…gentility fattening on the poverty of the slum as flies fatten on filth," but he cast his indictment in the form of a romantic comedy. Today, the play's façade of respectability and gentility tends to make more of an impression than the ugly reality that is meant to underlie it.
Although J.R. Sullivan has directed with laudable fidelity, the Pearl production reinforces this tendency toward pleasantness. Takeshi Kata's scenery, lit by Stephen Petrilli, cannot conceal the Pearl's budgetary limitations, but Liz Covey's Victorian costumes are exceptionally elegant. The actors are more personable than passionate. So when Sartorius, the wealthy slumlord, ruthlessly dismisses his wretched rent collector, it seems like an interlude of Dickensian melodrama in the midst of the Trollopian courtship of young Harry Trench and Sartorius' daughter Blanche. The crux of the play is Harry's disillusionment when he learns that his own income comes from a mortgage on slum property. But it is hard to believe that Sean McNall's schoolboyish Harry is capable of anything as serious as disillusionment. Dan Daily as Sartorius and Rachel Botchan as Blanche do not seek to whitewash the dark sides of their characters, but there are depths they do not plumb.
And yet. This is Shaw's first play, but it has some vigorous Shavian argument: Sartorius is not just a stage villain; he's the most intelligent character in the play. The challenge the play poses, as to whether our prosperity is generated by the misery of others, is still with us—or, if it is not, perhaps it should be. Underneath the gentle pleasantness of this production, the sturdier, more stimulating pleasures of unpleasantness still lurk.