For Shaw’s production of Tom Stoppard’s On the Razzle, on now at the Royal George Theatre on Queen Street, it’s all about the timing.
That’s established from the moment the curtain rises. The opening scene is a graceful slapstick dance of avoidance, as characters busily rush to ready Herr Zangler’s upscale Vienna grocery store for the day’s business dealings. It’s a marvel to watch as each actor hits his or her mark, punctuated by the ringing of shop bells. Sacks of flour fly across the room to find their rightful place below the counter, narrowly missing the actors.
And as the play progresses, it’s the impeccable comic timing of the actors that makes director Craig Hall’s On the Razzle a hilarious comedy of errors, mistaken identities, malapropisms and sexual innuendo.
Leading the charge is 20-year Shaw veteran Ric Reid in the role of Zangler, the self-centred, over-protective and often befuddled shopkeeper. Reid brings the right amount of bluster to Zangler, a man who loves to prance around in his shop in his military parade uniform.
In Stoppard’s script, Zangler has the propensity to mix his metaphors often, and this is where Reid’s comic timing shines. When Sonders, the hopeful suitor of the young Marie, declares that he loves the shopkeeper’s niece, Zangler is taken aback at the younger man’s fondness for his “knees”.
“My niece and I are not to be prised apart so easily,” says Zangler. “And nor hers.”
On the Razzle is full of such clever plays on words. And Zangler also specializes in muddling up common turns of phrase. Staples such as “cock of the walk” become “cake of the week” in his voice, and the laughs come hard as Reid’s Zangler continues to botch the phrase, groping comically for the correct words.
Zangler is also impatient and perpetually annoyed, if not angry. Besides his niece’s paramour he also lambastes his tailor, his new servant, a waiter and his housemaid Gertrud. He’s also prone to excessive preening. The sight of Reid squeezed into a military uniform two sizes too small elicits much laughter from the Shaw audience.
As Zangler leaves to meet his fiancee, Madame Knorr, owner of a Vienna dress shop, the audience is introduced to his head clerk Weinberl (Mike Nadajewski) and his junior clerk Christopher (Kristi Frank). The casting of the female Frank in a male role, by the way, was common in the early 20th century, when Stoppard’s 1981 play is set.
Frank is great as the clueless but affable Christopher. And the always great Nadajewski is perfect for the role of the sly, sneaky Weinberl. He nails the character’s impishness with his glances to the side and the greasy handlebar mustache he wears.
Nadajewski marvelously delivers an eloquent soliloquy about his place among the merchant class, before convincing Christopher to close up shop and go “on the razzle,” out for a good time to Vienna while the boss is away.
Of course, according to Murphy’s Law, nothing goes right. The second act sees Weinberl and Christopher continuously finding themselves in compromising positions, as they hit Vienna and somehow wind up at Madame Knorr’s shop and, later, at the same restaurant where Zangler plans to meet his fiancee.
There, they sit with both Madame Knorr (Claire Jullien) and Frau Fischer (Elodie Gillett), who of course think they are each someone they are not. Gillett’s Fischer, though, knows of the ruse, and gleefully tricks the pair into going deeper into the charade. Some of the best sexual innuendos in the play come through these mistaken identities.
With the city in the throes of a Scottish highland fashion craze for some reason, there’s a ton of tartan flying around. The capes and hoods, of course, are just large enough to conceal the true identities of the two shop assistants as they work their way into a series of pratfalls in an attempt to have a good time while avoiding their blustery boss.
Patrick Galligan makes two show-stopping entrances during this act, first as a lascivious, derriere-obsessed coachman and later as a loud, obnoxious Scotsman. They are both small roles, but Galligan’s performance in them elicits some of the loudest, heartiest laughs of the evening.
On the Razzle promises a great night, or afternoon, of ribald, escapist entertainment. There’s so much cleverness in Stoppard’s script that it’s easy to miss one or two of Zangler’s zingers. If that’s the case, it might be pertinent to see it a second time.
Tickets for On the Razzle, which runs until Sept. 2, are available at shawfest.com.