Play Guide
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The Play Guide for The Philadelphia Story was created by: Zachary Moull Assistant Dramaturg
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The Philadelphia Story runs from Jan. 27 to Feb. 22, 2015 For tickets, visit theatrecalgary.com or call (403) 294-7447 Front cover image by David Cooper
Table of Contents THE BASICS Cast and Creative Team ..................................................... 01 Time and Place ................................................................. 02 Story ................................................................................ 02 Who’s Who? ...................................................................... 03 EXPLORATIONS The Story of The Philadelphia Story .................................... 04 Philip Barry ....................................................................... 06 The Shaw Festival ............................................................. 07 Acting for the Long Run: An Interview with Actor Gray Powell ......................... 08 The Main Line ................................................................... 11 Glossary of Terms in The Philadelphia Story ........................ 12 CONVERSATIONS Conversation Starters ........................................................ 14 Organized Gossip .............................................................. 15 From Stage to Screen ........................................................ 16 Movie Night: Comedies of Remarriage ................................ 17 Sources ............................................................................ 18
THE BASICS
-1-
Cast and Creative Team Theatre Calgary presents the Shaw Festival production of
THE PHILADELPHIA STORY By Philip Barry
THE CAST
Guy Bannerman Tess Benger Fiona Byrne Sharry Flett Darcy Gerhart Aaron Hastelow Hal Kerbes Thom Marriott Patrick McManus Jeff Meadows Moya O’Connell Gray Powell Ric Reid Kiera Sangster Jonathan Tan
William (Uncle Willie) Tracy Dinah Lord Liz Imbrie Margaret Lord May, a maid Dr. Parsons Edward, a butler George Kittredge Macaulay (Mike) Connor Alexander (Sandy) Lord Tracy Lord C. K. Dexter Haven Seth Lord Elsie, a maid Mac, the night watchman
THE CREATIVE TEAM Dennis Garnhum William Schmuck Kevin Lamotte Jeremy Spencer Rachel Peake Jon Grosz Andrew Smith John Stead
Director Set and Costume Design Lighting Design Original Music and Sound Design Assistant Director Assistant Designer Assistant Lighting Design Fight Coordinator
Meredith MacDonald Amy Jewell Justin Born
Stage Manager Assistant Stage Manager Apprentice Stage Manager
THE BASICS
-2-
Time and Place The Philadelphia Story takes place in the Lord family’s grand house on their country estate outside of Philadelphia, over the course of twenty-four hours in late June, 1939.
Story What's worse than having a scandal-seeking tabloid reporter infiltrate your wedding? Your ex-husband could show up too. Beautiful, wealthy, and about to marry an all-American dream man, Tracy Lord has her perfect plans threatened by the most awkward kind of uninvited guests. With not one but three eligible bachelors, can she keep her wedding – and her heart – on track?
Moya O'Connell as Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story (David Cooper)
THE BASICS
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Who’s Who? Tracy Lord: A beautiful and wealthy young woman on the eve of her second marriage. Margaret Lord: Her mother. Seth Lord: Her estranged father. Alexander (Sandy) Lord: Her older brother. Dinah Lord: Her younger sister, age 15. William (Uncle Willie) Tracy: Her uncle. George Kittredge: Her fiancé, a self-made Pennsylvania coal magnate. C. K. Dexter Haven: Her ex-husband, a wealthy neighbour. Macaulay (Mike) Connor: A short-story writer and tabloid journalist. Liz Imbrie: Mike’s colleague, a photographer. Other characters include the Lord family’s household servants (butlers, maids, and a night watchman) as well as a parson.
Thom Marriott as George Kittredge, Moya O'Connell as Tracy Lord, Patrick McManus as Mike Connor, Fiona Byrne as Liz Imbrie, and Gray Powell as C. K. Dexter Haven in The Philadelphia Story (David Cooper)
EXPLORATIONS
-4-
The Story of The Philadelphia Story Before it was a hit Hollywood film starring Katharine Hepburn, The Philadelphia Story was a hit Broadway play – also starring Katharine Hepburn. In fact, Philip Barry’s play and Katharine Hepburn’s career are intimately connected with each other. Hepburn was one of the most successful film actresses of the mid-1930s, but she fell out of favour towards the end of the decade. Always known as one of Hollywood’s smartest and most
outspoken
actresses,
Hepburn eventually acquired a reputation
for
getting
into
conflicts with directors and studio
bosses.
Her
brash
confidence – along with socalled eccentricities such as preferring men’s clothing offcamera – meant that she didn’t comfortably fit the role of starlet. After a couple of flops in a row, Hepburn was promptly declared “box office poison” by
Katharine Hepburn and co-star Jimmy Stewart in a publicity photo for The Philadelphia Story, 1940 (MGM)
a powerful guild of independent movie theatres. “They say I’m a hasbeen,” she told a reporter in 1938. “If I wasn’t laughing so hard, I might cry.” When her film work dried up, Hepburn’s good friend Philip Barry approached her with a treatment for a play about a Philadelphia socialite, who bore some similarities to the actress herself. Hepburn grew up in a wealthy family, graduated from the elite Bryn Mawr College, and was
EXPLORATIONS
-5-
even been briefly married to the son of a prominent old-money Philadelphia family. Barry had made his career writing “Barry girls” – strong, witty, glamorous heroines – and Hepburn was his perfect star. She eagerly signed on, even agreeing to forego a salary in exchange for a stake in the project, and Barry crafted the role of Tracy Lord just for her. The Philadelphia Story was the hit of the Broadway season in 1939. It won praise not only for Hepburn’s radiant performance, but also for Barry’s nuanced portrayal of social and economic class, which was rare during the Great Depression, when the wealthy were often shown in caricatures of greed or snobbery. Said George Cukor, who would direct the film adaptation: “Those people are both rich and human.” Every Hollywood studio executive wanted the film rights to The Philadelphia Story, but no one wanted Hepburn in the lead role. On screen, they thought, Tracy Lord would be a vehicle for a more marketable star like Bette Davis or Joan Crawford. But the studios were in for a surprise – Hepburn had already snapped up the film rights herself. She sold the rights to MGM for an enormous sum, kept creative control over many aspects of the project, and returned to Hollywood on her own terms.
“Sometimes I wonder if men and women really suit each other. Perhaps they should live next door and just visit now and then.” – Katharine Hepburn
EXPLORATIONS
-6-
Philip Barry Philip Barry was one of the most popular Broadway playwrights of the 1920s and ‘30s. A promising writer even as a child, he went to college at Yale and studied playwriting in a
Harvard
workshop
with
George Pierce Baker, a pioneer of theatre education who also taught
such
luminaries
as
playwright Eugene O’Neill and critic Brooks Atkinson. Barry had his first play on Broadway by the age of 26 – You and I, a comedy he had written while still a student. Although Barry wrote in a variety of genres, he was most successful at comedy, creating what critics called a particularly American version of the classic comedy
of
manners
that
Philip Barry, 1931 (Bain News Service)
explored the quirks of the nation’s upper class. Barry’s best-known plays are the comedies Holiday (1928) and The Philadelphia Story (1939), both of which were adapted into major Hollywood films starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant.
“The time to make your mind up about people is never.” – Tracy Lord in Philip Barry’s The Philadelphia Story
EXPLORATIONS
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The Shaw Festival Dennis Garnhum, Theatre Calgary’s artistic director, directed this new production of The Philadelphia Story in the spring of 2014 at the worldrenowned Shaw Festival in beautiful Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. The production ran there for more than 70 performances over the course of the summer. Nearly the entire original cast made the journey to Calgary this January, along with the show’s designers. They spent a week of rehearsal with Dennis to fit the production to the Max Bell stage. The Shaw Festival was founded in 1962 to celebrate the works of Irish dramatist George Bernard Shaw, who wrote plays such as Major Barbara, Pygmalion, and Saint Joan. As the festival grew, its mandate expanded to include plays from or about Shaw’s era (he lived from 1856 to 1950). Under current artistic director Jackie Maxwell, the festival grew its new play development program and began to include the work of contemporary playwrights “whose work, like Shaw’s, continues to question the status quo in new and different ways.” Today, the Shaw Festival produces an annual season of 10 to 12 plays running spring to fall, with a typical year seeing more than 700 performances for some 250,000 audience members. Travelers come from across Canada and around the world to experience stunning classic and contemporary theatre in the heart of Ontario’s Niagara wine country. For more information about the Shaw Festival, visit www.shawfest.com.
“The Shaw Festival is a theatre company inspired by the work of Bernard Shaw. We produce plays from and about his era and contemporary plays that share Shaw’s provocative exploration of society and celebration of humanity.” – The Shaw Festival’s mandate
EXPLORATIONS
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Acting for the Long Run An Interview with Actor Gray Powell Gray Powell plays C. K. Dexter Haven, Tracy Lord’s ex-husband and unexpected wedding guest in The Philadelphia Story. A longtime Shaw Festival ensemble member, he’ll be returning there this summer for his ninth season. We spoke to him on the first day of the production’s one week of Calgary rehearsals. Did you have a moment when you knew that acting was what you wanted to do? I don’t know if there was a moment. When I was a kid I liked
school
plays,
doing
improv, going to theatre camp. I gravitated towards those things. But in high school, I was the type
of
student
who
was
interested in a lot of things, but not very passionate at that point about anything specific. There
Gray Powell as C. K. Dexter Haven and Moya O'Connell as Tracy Lord in The Philadelphia Story (Emily Cooper)
was a drama teacher when I was in Grade 11 who pointed me out and said “I’d like you to play Mortimer in Arsenic in Old Lace” or something like that. And the fact that he had faith in me said something. I went, “Oh, this is cool.” It was literally that boring – just me thinking “this is cool.” Then I went to the University of Toronto, and Ken Gass [the founder of Factory Theatre] was our first-year instructor. There was a passion that came from Ken, a real passion for Canadian theatre. It made me want to try to make a go at it. How did you find your way to the Shaw Festival? I graduated in 2000 and submitted stuff to Christopher [Newton] when he was Artistic Director and nothing, nothing, a couple times nothing. Then I crashed an audition when Jackie [Maxwell] was Artistic Director. I found
EXPLORATIONS
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out the day before where they were having the auditions, and I hung around for a few hours until everyone was done and they let me in. It was the end of a long day for them. I think I had a Michael Hollingsworth monologue and maybe a Henry monologue from Shakespeare – neither were even within the Shaw Festival mandate. Nothing came of that. Then in 2006, a couple years later, I got a late call from my agent saying there was a spot in general auditions, and I went in for that, and then they brought me in for a callback for The Circle, a Somerset Maugham play that Neil Munro was directing. It was just by luck. I just happened to fit that slot at the right time. You’ve worked for several years now within the Shaw Festival’s mandate to produce plays from Shaw’s era or in the spirit of his writing, dealing with social questions and complexities. What draws you to these plays? I think that’s exactly it. With Shaw in particular, there’s the long thoughts and the long arguments, which we just don’t have as much anymore in our writing. Christopher [Newton] used to say that it was the beginning of the modern age. Shaw was born as the photograph was being invented, and the telephone – these new ways of communication. And he died just after the Second World War. A lot of humanity is compressed in that hundred years. That’s fascinating to me. Tell me about C. K. Dexter Haven. He’s a bit of a cad... Oh yeah, he’s a bit of a rebel. I mean, he is a rebel within his particular world, within his own set. What connected me to Dexter was his desire not to give up on the humanity of Tracy. The only thing he wants is for her to show him that she’s a real person and that there is more than just the idea of this woman and of this set of people – there’s a depth there, a humanity. There’s a film adaptation of The Philadelphia Story that many people have seen. In your creative process, do you take that into account or do you put it aside?
EXPLORATIONS
- 10 -
I’ve never seen the film. I’ll watch it at some point. For me, it doesn’t help. I’ve done a few roles now where there’s a film version, and there’s no reason for me to watch the film for inspiration. It’s all in the text of the play. And I hear that the film of The Philadelphia Story is quite different for Dexter anyway – they kind of amalgamate him and Sandy. For this production, Dennis [Garnhum] was really trying to bring out the heart that he saw in the story. He wanted to have the conversation with us as players to figure out what our story was going to be. In a Shaw Festival season, actors typically rehearse and play two roles at the same time. You were Cliff Bradshaw in Cabaret at the same time as Dexter in The Philadelphia Story. What’s it like to be in the midst of two creative processes at once? Do they ever cross-fertilize? No, if anything they re-energize. I find it allows me to shut off one part of my brain while I work out other things in another show. You can rest from a show and then come back to it, which allows you not to obsess too much. I like it, but I’ve talked to actors who don’t. It’s very different from a three- or four-week rehearsal process. You get to live with the characters for longer. Yeah, the pressure to get a show up and going is not as great. We’ve got a little more time to let it gestate. And over the course of the run, you’re growing as well. You’re always finding stuff. It’s wonderful to work with a company every day, to have that long rehearsal period, to spend eight months of the year on stage. How does it feel to be coming back to the play after a couple of months? Well, we’ve basically just got off the plane and we haven’t really cracked this one yet. But in the fall, we remounted Arcadia after having a year off. I’d never done anything like that before. It’s a bit bizarre because you remember so much. You realize how much your body retains after a long run of a show. The challenge is not to get too caught in the rhythms and patterns that were there, and to recognize that there are places to fine-tune or tweak things. But it’s fun to feel it all pour out again.
EXPLORATIONS
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The Main Line The Philadelphia Story actually takes place beyond the Philadelphia city limits, in an area known as the Main Line. Named after the railway line that stretches west from the city, the Main Line’s landscape is a series of picturesque towns, elite private colleges, and grand country estates. In the midst of the Great Depression, the Main Line was a true bastion of privilege and old money. The programme notes for The Philadelphia Story’s
Rockefeller Hall dormitory on the campus
1939 premiere described it as “a of Bryn Mawr College, Katharine Hepburn’s Main Line alma mater (Montgomery vague mixture, to common city folk, of debutantes, horses, teas,
County Planning Commission)
balls, parties, promiscuous youths, society, and money, particularly the last two.” It was worlds away from the industrial city just a few miles east, let alone the blue-collar coal mining region to the north. Playwright Philip Barry was a frequent visitor to Ardrossan, the Main Line home of his college friend Edgar Scott and his wife, the famous socialite Helen Hope Montgomery. Set in the countryside near the town of Villanova, Ardrossan was one of the grandest estates in the region. It boasted a 50-room manor house built in the Georgian style, alongside dozens of outbuildings and hundreds of acres of green pasture. After the economic challenges of the Great Depression and World War II, many original Main Line families subdivided their estates or sold out to real-estate developers. Today, much of the area looks like any other affluent North American suburb.
EXPLORATIONS
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Glossary of Terms in The Philadelphia Story Quakers Pennsylvania was founded in 1681 by William Penn, a wealthy Quaker who came to North America from England. The Quakers, known internally as the Society of Friends, had split with the Church of England and believed in principles such as
pacifism,
a
personal
relationship with God, and the priestliness
of
all
believers.
Many Quakers followed Penn to his new colony to flee religious
discrimination
in
England, much like the Puritans who settled New England in the
early
honour
17th
of
contributions
century.
Penn of
and the
In the
state’s
Quaker community to public life, Pennsylvania’s nickname is the Quaker State. William Penn, 1718
Jeffersonian Democrat A Jeffersonian Democrat holds political views in line with those of Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the United States and its President from 1801 to 1809. Jefferson believed in limiting privilege and aristocracy. He promoted agrarianism and rural life, while distrusting the rising urban merchant class and manufacturing industries. Anthracite Anthracite is a high-quality type of coal mined in central Pennsylvania. It was widely used in home heating and power generation, as well as industrial processes such as iron smelting.
EXPLORATIONS
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Guffey Coal Act The Guffey Coal Act, officially called the Bituminous Coal Act, was a piece of legislation spearheaded by Pennsylvania Senator Joseph Guffey and passed by Franklin D. Roosevelt’s government in 1937. The Act regulated the unpredictable coal industry by letting the federal government set up price controls and production quotas. Wanamaker John Wanamaker founded Wanamaker’s, Philadelphia’s first department store, in 1876. Wanamaker was a retail pioneer, credited with inventing the price tag and popularizing the money-back guarantee. The flagship store was a renovated Philadelphia train station hall that contained the world’s largest pipe organ, bought from the 1904 World’s Fair. While the Wanamaker’s chain is no more, this store is still in operation as a Macy’s. Wilkes-Barre Wilkes-Barre is located on the banks of the Susquehanna River in the heart of Pennsylvania’s anthracite coal-mining region, about
100
miles
north
The Grand Hall of Wanamaker's in 2008 (wikimedia user Nikita52389)
of
Philadelphia. The city’s economy, heavily based on industrial resources like coal and iron, peaked in the first half of the 20th century. Stinger A stinger is a potent cocktail made with three parts brandy and one part white crème de menthe, served cold.
CONVERSATIONS
- 14 -
Conversation Starters
If you were in Tracy Lord’s place, who (if anyone) would you marry?
What makes a couple well-suited to each other?
What’s the worst fault or behaviour you could forgive your partner for? What would be unforgiveable?
Based on the perspectives expressed by characters in the play, how have attitudes about marriage and divorce changed over the past 75 years?
Mike Connor repeats a proverb: “With the rich and mighty, always a little patience.” What does he mean by this?
Playwright Philip Barry often wrote about the upper classes. What do you think is his opinion about the behaviour of the wealthy and their role in our society? What’s your perspective on this today?
Sandy Lord warns his family that they “don’t know what being under the microscope does to people.” In our time, it’s become more routine for our private lives to receive public attention. Has this scrutiny ever altered your own behaviour?
Gray Powell as C. K. Dexter Haven, Moya O'Connell as Tracy Lord, and Tess Benger as Dinah Lord in The Philadelphia Story (David Cooper)
CONVERSATIONS
- 15 -
Organized Gossip “Journalism is organized gossip.” – Oscar Wilde According to essayist Joseph Epstein, the best (or worst) gossip is:
Feasible – it sounds like it could have happened.
Uncheckable – it can’t be easily disproven.
Deeply damning – it’s something that the subject of the gossip would want to keep secret.
Originally a private activity, gossip has been more and more public ever since the invention of the printing press and the rise of mass-market newspapers. Readers have always wanted scandalous details about public figures and those with high social status: royalty, politicians, athletes, artists, and the wealthy. In the 1930s, most major American newspapers ran a gossip column, and gossip magazines were particularly interested in the lives of Broadway performers and movie stars. In the decades since, the distinction between gossip and hard news has become even less clear. Someone who is damaged by malicious public gossip can sue under defamation laws: slander if the defamation is verbal, and libel if it’s in print. Truth is a defense against such charges in the United States (although this is not always the case in Canada), and libel claims are weighed against the freedom of the press and the public’s right to know. Epstein writes that, when the desire for privacy meets the drive for publicity, “privacy goes down to defeat nearly every time.”
Do you gossip about people in your personal or work life? Have there ever been unexpected consequences? Do you follow the personal lives of any celebrities or public figures? If so, what fascinates you about them? When is the private life of a public figure newsworthy?
CONVERSATIONS
- 16 -
From Stage to Screen Theatre and film present different creative challenges and opportunities to artists, so there are lots of reasons why a film adaptation might differ from an original stage play. In adapting a play, screenwriters and movie directors might choose to use storytelling techniques that are better suited to film, or to tailor a role for a particular star actor. As well, American films in the 1930s and ‘40s were subject to censorship based on the Production Code, which set out rules for what could or couldn’t be shown on screen. Find the “Don’ts and Be Carefuls”, a 1927 precursor to the Production Code, at this link: http://www.wabashcenter.wabash.edu/syllabi/w/weisenfeld/rel160/donts.html
The Philadelphia Story was adapted into a film in 1940, directed by George Cukor and starring Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart. The screenplay was written by Donald Ogden Stewart based on Philip Barry’s original play. The play was adapted again in 1956, this time into the movie musical High Society. Written by John Patrick with music and lyrics by Cole Porter, High Society was directed by Charles Walters and stars Grace Kelly, Bing Crosby, and Frank Sinatra. (To complete the circle, a stage adaptation of High Society appeared on Broadway in 1998).
What are the major differences between the original play and either of these adaptations? Why do you think the film adaptors made these changes? Have any of your favourite books or plays been adapted for the screen? How did you feel about the film version?
CONVERSATIONS
- 17 -
Movie Night: Comedies of Remarriage The Philadelphia Story is an example of what scholar Stanley Cavell called "comedies of remarriage," a film subgenre that was popular in the 1930s and '40s. In these films, writes Cavell, “the drive of the plot is not to get the central pair together, but to get them back together, together again.” Film producers were attracted to these plotlines because they allowed them to portray complex relationships without running afoul of the Production Code’s restrictions on immorality, adultery, and pre-marital relations. As well, stories of married couples splitting and reconciling were particularly resonant in an era when divorce was still largely taboo. Comedies of remarriage tend to fit into the larger genre of screwball comedy, which feature strong heroines, witty dialogue, and surprising plot twists. Here are a few examples beyond The Philadelphia Story:
The Awful Truth Dir. Leo McCarey, 1937. Cary Grant and Irene Dunne play a divorcing couple who go to great lengths to sabotage each other’s new romances.
His Girl Friday Dir. Howard Hawks, 1940. In this adaptation of the Broadway play The Front Page, Cary Grant plays a newspaper editor who brings his former star reporter – and ex-wife – back to cover one last big story.
Adam’s Rib Dir. George Cukor, 1949. Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy play two married lawyers who find themselves on the brink of divorce while battling on opposite sides of a court case.
“A bride at her second marriage does not wear a veil. She wants to see what she is getting.” – Helen Rowland
CONVERSATIONS
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Sources Berkowitz, Edward D. Mass Appeal: The Formative Age of the Movies, Radio, and TV. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge UP, 2010. Callahan, Michael. “The Story Behind The Philadelphia Story.” Philadelphia, November 26, 2010. Cavell, Stanley. Pursuits of Happiness: The Hollywood Comedy of Remarriage. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1981. Epstein, Joseph. Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2011. “John Wanamaker.” They Made America. WGBH History Unit, PBS, 2004. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/theymadeamerica/whomade/wanamaker_lo.html
O’Reilly, David. “House So Grand, Even Tinseltown Had to Tone it Down.” Philadelphia Inquirer, May 6, 2007. “Quakers.” BBC, 2009. http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/christianity/subdivisions/quakers_1.shtml
“The Quakers.” History Channel. http://www.history.com/topics/quakers Pender, Judith Midyett. “The Philadelphia Story.” In The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama. New York: Columbia UP, 2007. Pender, Judith Midyett. “Philip Barry.” In The Columbia Encyclopedia of Modern Drama. New York: Columbia UP, 2007. “Shaw Festival Mandate and History.” http://www.shawfest.com/about-the-shaw/mandate-and-history/ Yearley, C. K. “Guffey Coal Acts.” In The Dictionary of American History. New York: Scribner, 2003.