The more obscure and difficult the play, the better director Neil Munro illuminated its essence.
Munro, who died Monday, July 13, at the age of 62, spent more than 35 years working in Canadian theatre as writer, actor and director. He spent most of the past 20 years at the Shaw Festival, where he helmed over 30 productions and became the company’s resident director.
He won several Doras, as author of Bob’s Kingdom and as director of Hamlet’s Room, a Theatre Plus production that ended its first act with Hamlet’s famous “To be or not to be” done as a stand-up lounge act.
That Hamlet turn showed Munro at his most incisive, questioning a text and letting us see it in a different fashion.
Not every show succeeded. I remember an updated production of Saint Joan in which his focus was the trial scene, with Joan (a fine Mary Haney) splayed across several TV monitors so that we could watch her closely. He was willing to sacrifice other episodes in the play the roar of airplane propellers drowned out the dialogue in one scene.
But it was with the unusual, the little-known, that Munro scored. He gave Counsellor-At-Law the look of a black-and-white film, helping his actors find rich characterizations in even the smallest of parts. In his hands, the almost-forgotten Canadian play Marsh Hay had the emotional depth of a frequently performed classic.
But what I’ll never forget are his productions of the entire canon of Shaw’s friend Harley Granville-Barker, better known as an actor, producer and critic. I’d not even heard of some of these plays, like Waste and The Marrying Of Ann Leete. Working with the fine Shaw acting ensemble, he coaxed every bit of nuance from the material.
The Shaw Festival will miss Munro, as will audiences who were treated to his perceptive productions. [rssbreak]
