CANDIDA
*** (out of 5)
Royal George Theatre, 2 hours, 10 minutes, one intermission. Ends Oct. 11.
By Bernard Shaw. Directed by Severn Thompson

Penny-Lynn Cookson
Special to The Lake Report

Who is this Candida, Candida, Candida? Her name is fervently repeated by the lovestruck young poet Eugene Marchbanks in a face-to-face confrontation with her stunned husband, the Rev. James Mavor Morell.

In his wildest nightmare, the shaken-to-the-core reverend cannot imagine how this snivelling, aristocratic young whelp could possibly be a contender for the affection of his beloved, beautiful wife, Candida.

Their altercation will not lead to a duel at dawn. There will be no flashing swords or drawn pistols for possession of Candida, but there will be ripostes, parries, barbs, a poker and iron to the chest that will stab the hearts of those occupying a perceived “perfect” traditional home in northeast London one day in October 1954.

In this triangle of love, originally described by Bernard Shaw as “a mystery,” Candida must choose which of the two men will be her future. 

It is Eugene, who Candida believes understands them all, who insists that Candida alone, independently, must make the decision that will potentially destabilize and alter the lives of those around her.

When “Candida” first surfaced as one of Shaw’s “Pleasant Plays” in 1898, Victorian Britain was in a time of peace and stability, of rising middle-class prosperity and values and brewing with social and cultural change.

Women were forming leagues and unions to fight for the right to vote and stand in elections both local and national.  

Shaw was a social activist and supporter of the Pankhursts and suffrage. He abhorred “Candidamania,” a romantic perception of “Candida” that swept New York City’s theatre crowd in 1904. 

Shaw, the committed Socialist, nonetheless enjoyed the capitalist gains of his increasing royalties allowing him to be a full-time writer and recipient of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1925.

“Candida” was not one of Shaw’s most important plays, but it continues to strike a resonant chord decade after decade because at its heart is the right of a woman to decide her present and future, her right to control her own body, to have children or not, to have equal rights for pay and jobs and to support a husband’s career and ambition —but not at the expense of forfeiting her own aspirations.

Now in 2024, what does this 1954 setting of “Candida” at the Shaw tell us?

The Rev. James Morell (Sanjay Talwar) is an ego-driven, stolid, kind Anglican clergyman, in demand as a renowned speaker and lecturer to all who will benefit from his wisdom and social activism for a better society. His calendar is full.

His devoted secretary, Prospertine Garnett, a single, lower middle-class woman, organizes his business life, receives less pay than previous jobs, has no life beyond her job and has an unrequited love for her boss. 

Jealous of his verbal devotion to Candida, she claims to appreciate her real qualities more than any man can. Gabriella Sundar Singh did not have the depth that this role demands. 

The philistine father of Candida, Mr. Burgess (a superb Ric Reid) has been absent for three years after a dust-up with his son-in-law, James.

Candy’s Daddy is a rapacious, swaggering, capitalist factory owner and clothing manufacturer with a bad reputation for stiffing his workers, especially women. He is outraged when the mere typist Prossy calls him a fathead.

He professes to have reformed, spouting insincerity and platitudes. The reforms? Women fired, replaced by technology and the few remaining men now earning 6p more! Let bygones be bygones! He wants a town council contract and James has the network to get it.   

The naive, assistant curate, Lexi Mill (an excellent Damien Atkins), is as rigidly uptight as his rolled umbrella protectively clutched to his body.

Hesitant, ever fearful, he answers the spiritual call but lacks the spirit of any real-life engagement, let alone following James’s advice to “get a wife like my Candida.”

Into their lives, enters Eugene (Johnathan Sousa in an over-wrought performance) the privileged upper-class son of an earl. Eton-educated, money in pocket, alienated from his background, he is a rebel against convention, boredom and a life without cultural purpose. 

He has an aesthetic, artistic sensibility with a passion for personal freedom, poetry and Candida. To him, Candida is a goddess.  Her fingers should never be sullied by mundane domestic tasks.

Eugene has gifted a copy of Titian’s “Assumption of the Virgin” to her. It hangs over the fireplace in the rectory drawing room.

Angels cluster below the Virgin Mary as she rises into a golden sky. All eyes are uplifted to the angel holding the crown that God will place on her head. 

Sadly, no one has thought to create a worthy replica for the set. The significance of the painting is not only Eugene’s deification of Candida but Shaw’s own engagement with a hot topic, the Marian theology controversy. Is Mary dead or alive when ascending?

And what of Candida? Sochi Fried gives a lively, no-nonsense spin to an energetic woman, supportive of her husband in the no-divorce social conformity of the 1950s.

Women had again been the most vulnerable of the workforce with jobs lost and given to the returning soldiers of the Second World War.

Candida may be frustrated by James’s obsession with his work and his frequent absences, but she is not a handmaiden or passive receptacle in her marriage. 

She patronizes her “boys,” Eugene and James. She is warm and comforting, a mother figure — then bang! She’s capable of a lightning strike of cold calculation meant to set a fire of communication.

Candida does not want to suppress her feelings or doubts. She longs for communication with words that speak from the heart what is necessary. Not platitudes, not the expected, but true words of emotion and meaning, a confession of spirit that astonishes and deeply wounds her husband who admits he can’t talk. He can only preach.

James gives Candida and Eugene time to be alone. Eugene does what he does best, reads his poetry to her.

Candida is bored. She would have preferred something more amusingly suggestive. Eugene believes that we long for love, but we are too shy to act. Will he succumb to temptation?

Will the realities of Candida’s life: stability, the guardianship of her children, her home, her economic security and her husband’s love determine her choice? Will she choose temptation?  

She asks Eugene to remember that when he is 30, she will be 45. When he is 60, she will be 75. Shaw recognizes an eternal angst of women’s insecurity: age discrimination and male misogyny.

Eugene understanding, replies that in 100 years they will be the same age. Liberated, he disappears into the waiting night.

Tradition is upheld.