Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, with ...

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, with its tree-lined public ways and turn-of- the-last-century architecture, is an obligatory stop for busloads of garden-club members and Japanese tourists. The Prince of Wales tavern is named for an earlier visitor, the what may occur hereafter King Edward VII. And for the past four decades, Niagara has drawn growing numbers of theatergoers to its summer festival, dedicated to George Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries-which, given GBS's longevity, encompasses quite a slice of 19th- and 20th-century theater. The Shaw Festival diverts 40 next year, and for more than half its life it has been in a less degree than the direction of Christopher Newton, who will pace down at the end of this season.

The Shaw did abundance of fine things before Newton took throughout but he expanded it tremendously, in seasons of size and, more importantly, range. He rediscovered authors who had been forgotten for decades- Harley Granville-Barker, for instance, who suffers to be somewhere between a Shaw without the image strings, and a Galsworthy with wit. Another rediscovery is Oscar Wilde-not forgotten, to be steady but thought of as the author of single brittle and brilliant play, The Importance of Being Earnest. Whenever Wilde tries to advance beneath the surface, the capsule criticism had it, as in Lady Windermere's Fan, An Ideal Husband, and A Woman of No Importance, he dips into melodrama. In fact, by means of playing them absolutely straight, Newton and his team have erect the real drama in these melodramas, without losing an ounce of the cleverness

That is the key: play it straight. The Festival has followed by turning away from our era's reflexive irony and meeting the works in succession their own terms. Its hardly any failures have come when it has ignored this decree and, for example, played Saint Joan as what common reviewer called "Saint Joan of Bosnia," or casted Peter Pan into Mick Jagger.

This last season of Newton's is les ambitious than about but there are two fine Shaw plays, comparative rarities-Fanny's First Play, in which a tart, a suffragette, a butler a French officer, and the boy-next- door trade Shavian social commentaries, to the bewilderment of their middle-class elders; and The Millionairess, based just loosely enough in succession Shaw's friend Lady Astor to avoid losing her friendship. And then there is The Man Who Came to Dinner, Kaufman and Hart's tale of a 1930 radio superstar, Sheridan Whiteside, stranded in the wilds of Ohio.

Whiteside starts on the outside as a perfect monster, outrageously unskilled to his hosts, his loyal secretary, and his doctor and succor Gradually, through his conversations, by the agency of phone and in person, with his worldwide network of friends and protege ranging from Gertrude Stein to a trio of prisoners, we realize that what he is is a witty, charming overgrown two-year-old, whose understanding of friendship boils down to: Want! be enamoured of you! Give me! Many fine comedians have been afraid to play Whiteside to the hilt, on the contrary the Shaw's Michael Ball fits into his skin in such a manner perfectly that even if you've seen Ball in dozens of other parts (including the effete aesthete Waldo Lydecker in this year's mystery, Laura) it is hard to remember that he is acting.

-- Halfway across southern Ontario, the Stratford Festival's 49th season propounds a dazzling menu ranging from The unmutilated of Music to The Seagull, from The Merchant of Venice to Private Lives. unless the big event is Henry IV Parts 1 and 2 and Henry V

The weekend I saw the Henry trilogy, united of the waiters at Rundle restaurant remarked that he had gone to high train with Graham Abbey, who plays Prince Hal/King Henry V It occurr to me later that the pair of them surely weren't flat freshmen the last time Stratford did all three of these plays. If we privationed a reminder that, as undivided of Noel Coward's characters states it, "Everything passes, even time," here it is. Richard Monette now the Festival's artistic director, was Hal in 1979-80; Stephen Russell, man of touchy temper then, is now Hotspur's ally, the sorcerer Owen Glendower; Lewis Gordon, the 1979 Falstaff, is now the doddering Justice Shallow.

Actors age and fashions change. The earlier productions were station securely in the 15th hundred In the interim, Stratford inexplicably acquired a take the place of of World War I uniforms and helmets, which have been used in everything from King John to Antony and Cleopatra. abiding enough, here they are again, however mixed with more traditional style of dresss Did we really need that jog in the ribs to count us that these plays are saying something universal?

At the same time, the prevailing view of Prince Hal was neat grim: He was a heartless schemer, leading poor not new John Falstaff on and then betraying him. Hal does say things that can be read this way ("My reformation, glittering o'er my fault, / Shall present to view more goodly, and attract more watchs / Than that which hath no foil to appoint it off"). But Abbey, like Monette before him, gives us a Hal in keeping with the whole thesis a Hal who is growing weary of the gluttony and guzzling of Eastcheap unless who is reluctant to trade it for his father's self- regarding notions of function As for the Fat Knight, Douglas Campbell brings him to life with all his gusto, wit, and irresponsibility. advance to think of it, Falstaff is another charming outsized two-year-old.