I was at the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada, this weekend. This is something my family does every summer.  The following was inspired by my time here.

Part One: The Bechdel Test
I saw four plays this weekend and they all passed the Bechdel Movie Measure . In Mrs. Warren's Profession , there are two female characters, Kitty and Vivie, but they are the stars, and they talk a lot, to each other, about everything (it's Shaw. Everyone talks a lot). In Getting Married , the female characters (Alice, Lesbia, Leo, Edith, and Mrs. George) do the same. There's quite a lot of interaction with the male characters, and talk about them, as well, but they do touch on non-man-related subjects between themselves. In Stephen Sondheim's musical A Little Night Music , Fredrika and Madame Armfeldt are frequently talking between themselves. Their main topic is Fredrika's mother, Desiree, though there's other stuff as well. There's also a conversation between Petra and Anne which touches on sex and theoretical men, but no concrete men. It's much more about their owns sexualities. And in Leonard Bernstein's Wonderful Town , sisters Ruth and Eileen are constantly talking about jobs, food, life...it's their story. And I love finding plays, and particularly musicals, which pass so well. It's often a crapshoot. Wicked , for example, passes with flying colors (Elphaba, Galinda, Nessarose, Madame Morrible...yeah). Avenue Q passes by the skin of its teeth (one tiny conversation between Mrs. Thistletwat and Kate allows it, but I still love it anyway). I don't know how well the stage version of Rent does; the film passes only due to the song 'Take Me Or Leave Me.' The Producers does not pass. Spamalot does not pass. I believe Aida, Mamma Mia, Gypsy , and Chicago all pass by some degree, but I'd have to revisit them all to be sure.

All were well-acted. A Little Night Music might just have my new favorite musical score.

Part Two: Big Analysis
Now, for a pet peeve of mine when I'm seeing plays...particularly those set between 1920 and 1960 or so? (This isn't specific to this festival; I've seen this at local theaters, on Broadway, and at my high school.) The 'bimbo accent.' If there is ever a character in one of these plays who's supposed to be a lower-class woman of 'low morals' (and possibly small brain capacity), the actress will adopt a high-pitched, nasal, giggly voice which sounds totally unnatural. Roles in which I've seen this? Irma in Anything Goes (twice). Frenchie in Grease . Adalaide in Guys and Dolls . Violet in Wonderful Town . (Hence why I thought of this.) And I know I'm forgetting a few. It's a cheap device, in my mind, overdone. One of the reasons I liked A Little Night Music so much was that Julie Martell, the woman who played Petra (who is pretty, clearly likes sex, and is from a lower class than the other characters), spoke in a normal voice and seemed completely natural.

The voice itself annoys me, the redundancy of it moreso, but what is it saying? That women who have (premarital, 'promiscuous') sex are lesser. That we're dumb and can be taken advantage of, easily. Because these characters aren't going to turn out to be geniuses. They'll sometimes end the story married and in love, but the audience knows the man is with them for their body, not their brain or personality, and not a combination of the three either. It's especially strange in Anything Goes , because one of the main female characters (Reno) certainly isn't some chaste virgin, yet she's depicted as being quite intelligent. So why is Irma needed except to reinforce the stereotype? "Yes, some promiscuous women are okay, but they're few and far between, and most of them are like Irma or Reno's dancers." (I had almost forgot about the dancers. They're part of this same stereotype.)

This is one thing I have to commend Avenue Q for, because while Lucy the Slut is clearly supposed to be very, very sexual, she speaks in a husky voice, is never shown to be less intelligent than the other characters (she's probably smarter than Princeton, not as smart as Kate, as shown by their interactions), and is clearly in control of her sexuality. And while her ending isn't perfect, at least it's not the usual 'sugar daddy marriage' conclusion--no, she becomes a fundamentalist Christian.

I'm guessing the voice is supposed to be annoying. It's supposed to make misogynist theatregoers think "oh, that dumb Adelaide. I can see why Nathan won't marry her." (Though Adelaide's better by some measure--she does put her foot down, she doesn't except all of Nathan's crap, for a while at least.) Irma in Anything Goes is constantly being used by her friends to get things from sailors, and is portrayed as not really knowing she's being used.

In conclusion...go Shaw, go Sondheim, go actors, directors, and writers who refuse to fall pray to overused sexist tropes. More of you are needed in the world.

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