Candida

by Toby Zinman

One of the most pleasant of George Bernard Shaw’s comedies, Candida is full of wit and charm and talk. And McCarter’s stylish production is a confection in the old style; Lisa Peterson directs an ensemble of deliciously fine actors who deliver the play tied with a bow.

Taking that oldest of dramatic devices, the love triangle, Shaw gives us an earnest clergyman with radical politics and a golden tongue, the Rev. James Morell (Michael Siberry). His wife, Candida (Kate Forbes), is an eminently sensible and lovely woman who loves her husband. But when Marchbanks (Jeffrey Carlson), a young and poetic aristocrat, taken in as a waif, falls in love with Candida, the household is thrown into a temporary tizzy. Factored into the marital commotion is Morell's secretary, Proserpine (Polly Lee), who is devoted to her boss beyond the call of duty; Lexy (Michael Milligan), Morell's assistant and another admirer of Candida; and Candida's father, a conniving if sweet businessman (Robert Langdon Lloyd).

Shaw said, "There is no subject on which more dangerous nonsense is talked and thought than marriage." Candida is an independent thinker, a woman who chooses rather than who is chosen, and this gentle feminism, more than 100 years old, is a heartwarming moment in the ongoing dialogue about marriage.

And since the play is built entirely on talk, director Lisa Peterson has cleverly maximized the physical business possible within the script. Most extraordinary is Jeffrey Carlson's wonderfully limber and collapsible aesthete -- pale, slim and able to fold himself up into small, tormented packages, Carlson's Marchbanks is irresistible. He provides the perfect foil to Michael Siberry's distinguished Morell -- tall, silver-haired, immensely solid, his open face makes the Reverend the most modest and manly of heroes. As Candida, Kate Forbes is more wholesome than gorgeous (why have they dressed her in such unbecoming costumes?), able to convey subtle amusement even in her most dramatic moments.

All told, this is a Shaw as Shaw should be -- elegantly acted, fun to watch, interesting to listen to.

CANDIDA

Through April 11, McCarter Theatre, 91 University Place, Princeton, N.J., 609-258-2787

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