At
the Utah Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City Noel Coward's
"Relative Values" is a comical look at changing and
conflicting social values in aristocratic England in 1951. It's set
entirely in the library of the Marshwood house in East Kent. We have
an elegant set with antique furniture, elaborate wall panels, a
balcony, and two elegant doorways. One leads into the house, the
other into the garden, with climbing vines visible through the glass.
As the play opens a crisis is in the works. Nigel, Earl of Marshwood
is about to marry beneath himself, to an American actress. Further
complicating the matter, his mother the Countess' personal maid,
Moxie, is the long lost sister of the actress Miranda Frayle. Moxie
is hysterical and preparing to leave, when a plot is worked out to
make her an heiress living with the family. It goes well until
Miranda starts telling of how she was raised in a London slum by a
drunken mother and mean sister who has since died, after spending all
the money Miranda has sent her over the years on booze. Moxie
explodes and tells everyone she
is Miranda's sister and sets the record straight about her mother and
the "obstacles" that Miranda has overcome.
A lid is kept on the action,
somewhat by the methodically scheming Countess, Felicity, and the
droll, philosophical butler, Crestwell. These characters provide the
anchor in the chaos and focus and direct the action. When Miranda's
old boyfriend, the actor Don Lucas, shows up, it's Crestwell he
encounters. We have the stark contrast of the young, familiar,
desperately in love, American with the unflappable dry, class
conscious butler. At this point, Felicity takes over. She makes sure
Don stays around, with the intention of creating conflict and sending
Miranda off with him. As she manipulates the events, Patricia
Fraser's Felicity is flippant, snide, and entirely in control. When
Miranda tells her "I'm not as stupid as you think I am."
she replies "I'm glad." She explains to Miranda that Nigel
is like his father in that "...he never looked twice at a woman
unless she had a good streak of commoness." Libby George is a
tremendous Moxie. Through all of her travails she only briefly
forgets her station. In private, though she takes out all of her
frustration on Crestwell. William Leach's Crestwell is the model of
the upper crust English butler. Class distinctions are everything for
him, and he's simply riding the storm out. At one point he says that,
"In common with most of the human race, I know very little, but
imagine I know a great deal." As the play reaches it's happy
conclusion, he toasts Moxie and the "disintigration of the most
unlikely dream...social equality." This delightful prooduction
of Noel Coward's "Relative Values" continues, along with
"Romeo and Juliet" and "Joseph and the Amazing
Technicolor Dreamcoat" in The Randall Theater through September
5, at The Utah Shakespearean Festival
in Cedar City. Shakespeare's "King
John" plays outdoors in the Adams Shakespearean Theater.