George Bernard Shaw is a contrarian and a gadfly who wants it both ways and delightfully gets it in the Bay Theater Company’s season-ending production (to May 30) of Candida directed by Lucinda Merry-Browne. To be exposed to Shaw’s language is to luxuriate in all the epigrammatic wit, wordplay, and verbal fisticuffs that this punchy prose stylist can deliver.   Candida is a relatively early play (1898) before his ship had come in, and on the surface a fairly conventional 3-act melodrama, with a love triangle that is set up quickly and resolved at the conclusion. 

The parts are generally well cast and the direction consistent with the play’s production history.  Candida (Vanessa Morosco), the White Goddess, is married to Reverend James Morrell, a man-of-the-world clergyman who has his eye on higher church office, and is pursuing a very full speaking agenda.  They both befriend a wayward aristocratic youth and sometimes poet named Marchbanks (Dan Stowell) who has his eye on Candida and nothing else.   It’s Youthful Idealism versus Journeyman Pragmatism on the main card, with Virtuous Woman serving as the referee, judge, and prize. 

Played with poise by the statuesque Vanessa Morosco, Candida commands every social scene with an ever-present smile that puts a bright spin on her world, and Carl Randolph imparts a dignity and charisma, but also obtuseness, to the Rev. Morrell; it’s easy to see why many fall for his charms if not necessarily his ideas.  Dan Stowell’s character is usually played over-the-top to emphasize his immaturity (he’s only 18) and commitment to his lofty ideals.  He is part esthete – art for art’s sake – and part anarchist; he’s attempting to dynamite a sacred union in this world.  I don’t think they mix especially well and the high strung performance wears thin at times.    

Big ideas abound, though their resolution is another story: Shaw uses the rhetorical device of inversion again and again not only in his language but in his arguments, standing questions and answers on their heads, and you always expect the unexpected coming out of his characters’ mouths.  When the action starts to flag, and it does in the first part of the play, he sends in some zany figures to carry the day.   Chief among these are Candida’s father Burgess (played by the delightfully roguish Joe Cronin) who is always looking for his main chance and long-suffering secretary, Proserpine (performed by CeCe McGee who captures her fussiness and vulnerability).  The two have several entertaining and poisonous exchanges in the first two acts.  Both Burgess’s and Proserpine’s sharp tongues find an outlet with Morrell’s curate Reverend Alexander (Lexy) Mill (played with affability by Jared Mercier).    Everyone is in love with someone or something else, is talking past or over the next person, and each one thinks the other is crazy.  Hey, just like ….!

In the second part, Candida is a bit of a dominatrix as she sorts through the conflict underfoot and orders Marchbanks about like a lapdog.  There’s a wonderful scene between the two where she's swinging a poker in front the fire that’ll appear quite Freudian.   The revelation that she serves up at the end - that her husband has been cosseted cradle to pulpit by women and he needs her most - must have been scandalous in its day, but is still tough going down.   Shaw looked at the way in which women and men created their ideal only to find the creations wanting.  There’s no equality in a play about creation and that is the real stinger here. The web that has been thrown out here, will snare the weaver.  There’s a loneliness in Candida that is palpable and Reverend Morrell, it seems, has achieved a pyrrhic victory, with his illusionary world in tatters: going forward it’ll be harder to sustain the happy domesticity of home and hearth, Prossy’s real complaint.  And Marchbanks: he seems the better, leaving with a poet’s secret in his heart, which he will undoubtedly turn into a story.  Beware the writer, who always has the last word!

The set design (Ken Sheats) is quite pleasing, with a William Morris-type window and a brown, blue-green, and orange color palette throughout, which is complemented by some very nice costumes (Jill Kyle-Keith). Though perhaps not intended, the tightly packed set on this small stage conveys the constricted Victorian world.

Shaw productions, for some reason always stay pretty faithful to the text.  Whether this is due to the detailed story line and character notes – they can and should be read as great works of literature – or whether memorable performances such as Wendy Hiller’s and Katherine Cornell’s  have stamped them in theatrical minds, it seems only the audiences have changed over the years.  A play like this, with a somewhat dated and thin plot, would seem ideal for a different look.  Shakespeare is adapted all the time and even O’Neill is getting another treatment in Robert Falls’ recent productions in Chicago and New York.   You might try to re-imagine the conflict in modern guise or take another look at the perceived purity of Candida.  She is her father’s daughter, and Burgess is an opportunist of the first order.  How far did the apple fall from the tree?  The class conflict is there between the haughty Marchbanks and the upwardly mobile Morrell.  While it is not as apparent to American audiences, where class usually comes down to money or differences between the have and the have nots, you might show it by heightening the disparity in wealth or by using non-traditional casting, by race. 

Sound check: Vocal projections from the 2 male leads are too loud for this small space

Program notes: Very good, with synopsis, author bio, and notes from artistic director, and dramaturg

Applause meter: 3+ Hands. Recommended for Shavians everywhere, general audiences, and those interested in the Victorian world view
Runtime: About 2 hours with an intermission