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Artistically, the company already seems secure. The first four productions, although they tend toward the conventional and ingratiating, all have a high gloss, especially in design. Phillips and Phillip Silver have created a standing set: a streamlined, frame-and-window contraption that can look like a temple, a skyscraper or the wall of a conservatory. It neatly frames an all but impeccable The Doctor's Dilemma, Shaw's affectionate satire of medical theories, artistic pretensions and the absurd complexities brought on by love. The plot, a wittily constructed but logically dubious foofaraw, about a physician who must decide whether to save the life of a mediocre yet decent colleague or that of a gifted yet wicked artist, is taken just seriously enough to display the talents of the cast. Even the smallest performances are persuasive, and one is exceptional: as the artist's devoted wife, a woman so blind to her husband's sins that she might easily seem pathetic, Martha Henry radiates strength, grace and throbbing-voiced appeal. In Dilemma's other exacting role, Brent Carver finds the scapegrace charm and wit of the dying young artist but just misses the offhand incandescence that would fit the repeated description of him as a genius. Phillips has acted the part himself, to acclaim, and knows that the character's simultaneous power to seduce and appall an audience is vital to the play's debate.
Carver is also a little shy of star quality as Jesus in the musical Godspell, although his singing voice is sweet and true, his movement is crisp, and his line readings are intelligent. The rest of the ensemble has a more spontaneous energy, and one player, Neil Foster, almost explodes in the up-tempo We Beseech Thee. The slight plot and Stephen Schwartz's exuberant score, which in the 1971 premiere seemed purely a product of flower power, hold up surprisingly well: the youths who eventually join up with Jesus have been reconceived by Director Gregory Peterson as 1980s punk rockers with spiky hair, stiletto heels and spooky makeup, and their menacing manner lends urgency to the effort to convert them to righteousness.
Waiting for the Parade is less a play than a series of review sketches, mostly comic, about the women left behind when Canada's men went off to World War II. Director Phillips and a standout cast, notably Carole Shelley, Sheila McCarthy and Susan Wright, almost overcome the predictability of the stories.