George Bernard Shaw the theatre critic might have had some stern things to say about Shaw the playwright’s 1896 work You Never Can Tell. With its mixture of farce, romance and trenchant social commentary, it has all the elements of his later plays, but in a bumpy, undigested form. Introducing the free-thinking author Mrs Clandon (Eleanor Methven) and her three children, who have returned to the south coast of England from Madeira, the first act laboriously establishes a plot that is a delivery system for arguments about marriage, society and parenthood which still have bite.
Conall Morrison’s production highlights the escapism of the seaside setting, with Liam Doona’s stage design creating a picture-book island surrounded by dappled water and sunlight. In these surroundings, Mrs Clandon’s recollections of her violent husband seem incredible to her children, who insist on learning the identity of their father, from whom they have been separated since childhood. When, through a series of coincidences, they meet him, the antipathy is mutual. “This family is no place for a father,” Mr Crampton says, observing their unconventional ways, and a debate ensues about the duty and respect owed to a father, even if he has done nothing to deserve it. With reconciliations orchestrated by an old family friend and the absurdly deferential hotel waiter (Niall Buggy), a dramatic version of Sense and Sensibility unfolds.
Buggy’s spot-on comic timing makes some of the other performances seem heavy handed. Gerard Byrne, temporarily standing in for Eamon Morrissey as Mr Crampton, has an impressively light touch also. Eleanor Methven captures Mrs Clandon’s bitter disappointment in her marriage, an experience that led her to change her name and publish a series of treatises on marriage and parenthood. A figure of fun to an extent, a parody of the New Woman of the 1890s, Mrs Clandon also makes acute observations on women’s lack of autonomy. Her eldest daughter Gloria (Caoimhe O’Malley) is adamant that she will have nothing to do with marriage – until she falls in love. The “duel of sex” between Gloria and the penniless dentist Valentine (Paul Reid) poses a central question: can a woman retain self-determination within the institution of marriage? Differences seem to dissolve in a gorgeous carnival finale, but Shaw leaves us in no doubt that compromise is not as easy as it looks.
- At Abbey theatre, Dublin, until 6 February. Box office: +353 (0)1878 7222.
