The Perfect Wife, CTF’s current offering, is a four-course meal prepared by the team of Norma Bowen and Jeremy Tow out of four short plays written by three different authors. The four plays are comedies, with real comedy’s edge of truth. Two are by Anton Chekhov, The Marriage Proposal and The Bear. They are his best-known short plays, at least to English-speaking audiences. (For The Perfect Wife, The Bear has been moved from the Russian steppe to the Saskatchewan prairie, where money and love are no less important.) While Chekhov sometimes modestly dismissed his short plays as ‘trifles’, he also defended them, against disparaging critics, as legitimate works of art. He continued to work on them while writing his more famous plays. More importantly, Chekhov and others exploited the ‘vaudeville’ as a subterfuge to evade a double censorship prevalent in Russia in the 19th century: a critical censorship, which demanded adherence to stuffy, moralistic 18th and 19th century theatrical conventions; second, and more ominous, the official censorship, which forbade any criticism of the existing Russian social order. Farces, unlike ostensibly serious dramas, might escape the censor’s and the critic’s eye. Partly as a result, Chekhov is said to have made more money with his ‘vaudevilles’ than with his masterpieces. Chekhov practiced as a medical doctor all his life, witnessing plenty of hardship. The realism of his plays, which offended both convention and censorship, was thus based on experience. His dramatic technique mirrored his medical practice: he once wrote, ‘First of all, I’d get my patients into a laughing mood, and only then would I begin to treat them.’

George Bernard Shaw’s share of The Perfect Wife is A Village Wooing. Shaw resolutely refused to portray conventional tremulous maidens hopefully looking out for a glimpse of shining armor. His village girl pins down her man as firmly as Chekhov’s spinster returns (over repeated self-imposed obstacles) to the important business of The Proposal, and as boldly as the mourning widow faces the title character in The Bear.

The Engine of Fate, adapted by Norma Bowen and Jeremy Tow from a story by the American writer Trevanian, fits elegantly with the other playlets. The story, as written, consists almost entirely of dialogue between two characters, who progress from initial hostility to - - - but that would be telling. The female is decidedly feisty, and the man, like Chekhov, writes farces and defiantly defends them. ‘Trevanian’ was one of several pen names of Rodney Whitaker, a career academic, for some years head of the department of film studies at the University of Texas. Whitaker/Trevanian apparently wrote his best-known novel, The Eiger Sanction, as a spoof of spy fiction in the James Bond mould, and was surprised, and a little miffed, that it was taken seriously by reviewers and millions of readers. It was taken seriously also by Clint Eastwood, who produced the movie of the same title, for which Whitaker was given a credit as co-writer of the screenplay. Whitaker died in 2005.

Jeremy Tow and Norma Bowen have woven these disparate works into a seamless narrative spanning generations and continents.

One-act plays have had a mixed history in terms of critical esteem, but they have always attracted both audiences and playwrights.

In England, the first productions acted out on something like a stage were in effect one-act plays; they were religious plays, intended to instruct the illiterate faithful. Since there was much biblical and subsequent history, and morality, to cover, they were often expanded into cycles. The talents of creators and actors and the tastes of the people inevitably turned to secular themes, initially comic, often robustly so, even by modern standards. In time, playwrights evolved more serious plots, richer dialogue, and more complex characters. Audiences came to expect plays to occupy a whole evening; one-acters were considered mere appetizers. Not entirely, however, by writers.

Anton Chekhov and George Bernard Shaw are gods in the theatrical pantheon, but both took considerable satisfaction in crafting small jewels as well as great monuments. More recently, there has been resurgence in the creation of one-act plays. In Noel Coward’s hit series Tonight at 8:30, the plays are all entertaining, but many are deadly serious. Terence Rattigan, Tennessee Williams, Thornton Wilder, Edward Albee, Arthur Miller and Tom Stoppard, among others, have made substantial contributions to the genre. Neil Simon’s Plaza Suite, California Suite and London Suite are all made up of three one-act plays.

The Perfect Wife is a novel departure, blending four initially unrelated works into a coherent, and highly amusing, evening (or afternoon) in the theatre.

by Frank McGilly