The Shaw Festival Theatre Review: Tom Stoppard’s On The Razzle

By Ross

She peeks out from behind the red curtain, way over to the side, stepping out with a big rumped bottom to get the shop together with a crisp musical bang. It’s a deliciously sharp and energetic beginning, delivering swinging excitement with every clang and comic side step. The electric mercantile chaos unravels a visual representation of everything you are about to experience in this gorgeously fun and hilariously smart rendering of Tom Stoppard’s delightfully crafted 1981 play, On the Razzle. It flies and gives itself over to the malapropisms most magnificently at Shaw Festival’s lovely jewel box theatre, The Royal George in the quaint and charming Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. It’s one of those glorious pieces of farcical theatre to good to be missed.

“This text is not really a translation of Nestroy’s play in the strictest sense. My method might be compared to cross-country hiking with map and compass, where one takes a bearing on the next landmark and picks one’s own way towards it…whichis why it was a holiday as well as hard work.”

-Tom Stoppard in the preface to the published play.

“One false move,” he tells us as the grand setup is laid out beautifully before us, and “we could have a farce!” And boy, do those well-trained moves deliver in this delectable romp as directed with a keen sharp wit by Craig Hall (Shaw’s Faith Healer). Packaged perfectly in its farcical design, Stoppard is giving you a bit of Budapest’s Parfumerie (the 1937 play by Hungarian playwright Miklós László, that the musical She Loves Me and the film “The Shop Around the Corner” and ultimately, “You Got Mail” were all based upon) and a whole heap of secondary storylines from the iconic musical, Hello, Dolly! So it’s no surprise that deja vue abounds, as the connective tissues are all there for the following. Stoppard used, as his base, the 1842 play, “Einen Jux will er sich machen” (He’s Out for a Fling) by Johann Nestroy, a play that Thornton Wilder also based his The Merchant of Yonkers play, and subsequently, the more universally known The Matchmaker. In that reworking (are you still following all this?), Wilder added a character Stoppard and On the Razzle left out; the infamous Dolly Gallagher Levi, who Jerry Herman musicalized into the beloved Hello, Dolly! Stoppard, on the other hand, focused his unique vaudevillian wordsmith charm on the characters that Wilder downgraded to second fiddle. And in that focusing, we all have been gifted with the gloriously funny and sharp as a tack On the Razzle.

This is just the kind of play that the Shaw Festival does so so well, and it’s perfectly constructed and brought to life in that sweet town theatre. Giving you everything you could hope for, thanks to the talented design team that includes: impeccable sets and glorious costumes by Christina Poddubiuk (Soulpepper’s Mary Stuart), sumptuous lighting by Kimberly Purtell (Studio 180/fu-GEN’s The Chinese Lady), sweet projections by Jamie Nesbitt (ARC’s 36 Views), and a solid sound design by Mike Rinaldi (Tarragon’s Within the Glass) ushering forth the delicious original music by Alessandro Juliani (NAC’s King Lear).

On the Razzle dazzles, running itself off into the wild when two young store clerks, played magnificently by Mike Nadajewski (RMTC’s Cabaret) as Weinberl and Kristi Frank (Grand Theatre’s Shrek) as the young apprentice Christopher, decide to run off for a night of adventure (a Razzle as they used it call it) in Vienna. “On the Razzle” is a delightfully fun, and not completely negative euphemism describing the actions of someone who has drunk, or is about to drink, a considerable amount of libations. It is often only used to describe someone who has decided to completely enjoy themselves on a night out. And this is exactly what these two sweet sympathetic souls are looking to do when their boss, Zangler, delightfully pompously portrayed by Ric Reid (Citadel/Canadian Stage’s The Humans), leaves them in charge so he can go away to meet his fiancee, shortly after employing a new servant Melchior, devilishly well played by the “classic” Jonathan Tan (Bad Hats’ Alice in Wonderland).

The only problem in all this, beyond the new servant who has yet to meet any of these people face to face, is that Zangler’s fiancee, the wondrous Madame Knorr, played to the nines by Claire Jullien (LCT’s King Lear) runs a fine fashion house that is also in Vienna, catering to the likes of the well-to-do, like the feisty Frau Fischer, delightfully portrayed by Élodie Gillett (Neptune Theatre’s Into the Woods). And as this is a “classic” farce dripping in tartan, it’s no shock or surprise that the two shop clerks are going to run right into the tightly uniformed Zangler, forcing all kinds of disguises and alternative identities to be cloaked upon their shoulders at every stop made.

Secondary to these Hello, Dolly! secondaries who are primaries here in On the Razzle, we are also presented with Zangler’s young ward; his niece, the lovestruck Marie, played lovingly by Lindsay Wu (Factory Theatre’s Lady Sunrise) who wants to run away with her young suitor, the currently poor (but with high hopes) Sonders, played well and good by Drew Plummer (Rainbow Stage’s Mamma Mia!). Zangler is trying to secret away Marie also to Vienna, to stay with the formidable Fraulein Blumenblatt, regally portrayed by Tara Rosling (Tarragon’s If We Were Birds), and her French maid Lisette, delightedly portrayed by Alexandra Gratton (Theatre Calgary’s The Louder We Get!). But things don’t go as planned in that department, thanks to the clumsy help of the randy coachman (and Scotsman), played to Monty Python heights by the wonderful Patrick Galligan (Studio 180/Mirvish’s Oslo), the well-repeating Gertrud, played delightfully by Julie Lumsden (Shaw’s Gaslight), the tailor/German/waiter, portrayed strongly by Jason Cadieux (Canadian Stage’s Twelfth Night), another waiter played well by Taurian Teelucksingh (Grand Theatre’s Elf: The Musical), and a Belgian/constable/Waiter played perfectly by Graeme Kitagawa (Gateway Theatre’s The Music Man), who could, in the end, change the whole outcome if they would just stop long enough to listen to what he has to say. 

Stoppard delightfully shepherds these characters through a wonton web of wise double entendres and corrective rephrasing with the sharpest of witty unravellings. It’s shockingly smart in its quick corrections, delivered to perfection by this precise most excellent cast, particularly around the delivery of the muddled lines of Reid’s Zangler, who is perpetually looking to have his mistaken words realigned and edited by those around him. It’s pretty “classic” and complimentary, this well-timed, well-rehearsed comedic rapture, as they run circles around each other trying to keep from being discovered and possibly destroyed.

Nadajewski, partnered with the wide-eyed Frank, is stunningly good, with both of them selling their lines and predicaments with precision and a clear love for the language, like the great salespersons they are. The two embody everything that is required, with both their limber physicality and their magnificent comic timing, throwing lines at one another and at those around them with such clever sharpness that we can’t help but be taken by their strong appeal.

“Look, there’s a second ladder!” one says, much to our complete enjoyment of all as we engage and completely enjoy each and every one of these farcical physical stunts and broad gesturings. It’s hard to imagine that this play was never known to me before this viewing, and after watching and loving Stoppard’s recently closed, but ultimately adored and awarded Leopoldstadt on Broadway, it’s equally stunning to try to imagine this perfectly constructed comedy coming from that same brilliant mind. But, I must admit, it all makes sense. To deliver forth this lark of a play, a love of language and exacting precision is required in abundance. And Stoppard has it, along with his signature wit muddling his words to our delight. On the Razzle, a euphemism describing the actions of someone who has drunk, or is about to drink, a considerable amount of libations, is “a bit of harmless fun“, so says director Hall in his notes, and the play dutifully delivers the hilarious goods on all accounts, and more. Now, please, would you finally let that Belgian lawyer-kinda-man speak and show us what is in his briefcase? Cause it might just change everything. But for sure it and the production will leave you laughing and smiling uncontrollably as you wander out onto the streets of Niagara-on-the-Lake, thanking the stars and the Shaw Festival for all the wondrously wild wordplay that lives inside Stoppard’s brilliant comedy.