Tons of Money – Review of 2025 Shaw Festival Production

The Shaw Festival is up and running at full speed. There are three productions at the big Festival Theatre starting with The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, an adaptation of C. S. Lewis’ Narnia Chronicles novel adapted by Tim Carroll and Selma Dimitrijevic. Cole Porter’s Anything Goes, with a new book by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman, is the big musical offering. Wait Until Dark by Frederick Knott, adapted by Jeffery Hatcher is a suspenser thriller that should keep people nailed to their seats.
There are three productions at the elegant Royal George Theatre. Major Barbara, the only play by Bernard Shaw that will be staged there this year even though the Festival is named after him. This is the eighth production of the play so it must be judged “a winner.” Tons of Money, reviewed here, and Murder-On-The-Lake which is billed as “A spontaneous theatre creation” by Rebecca Northan and Judith Bowden. A murder (?) in Niagara-on-the-Lake has stumped the authorities and an audience member is invited on the stage to go undercover to help catch the perpetrator.
There are two productions at the Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre: Gnit by Will Eno is directed by the Festival’s Artistic Director Tim Carroll about someone looking for his true self with references to Ibsen’s Peer Gynt and much more no doubt. Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearls Cleage is about survival by black performers in 1930 Harlem.
In the Spiegeltent you can see Dear Liar by Jerome Kilty co-created and acted by Marla McLean and Graeme Somerville. The Festival’s program informs us that there will be cabarets, concerts, singing and dancing and laughter and more in the tent so you may choose among the six offerings including Dear Liar. One may comment on the choice of plays offered but I think it is more prudent to pass judgment on each production and in the end on the season rather than a priori on the choices of the Artistic Director.
Tons of Money by Will Evans and Valentine had its London premiere in 1922 and despite some fallow years has never disappeared from the repertoire. The Shaw Festival showed it in 1981 with the great farceur Heath Lamberts. He was a rare talent and Canada has not found a true successor to him.
The current production directed by Eda Holmes generates considerable energy in telling the farcical plot. There are moments of genuine laughter, especially in the second half but the farce never really catches fire. Comparisons are always odious or is it odorous but one cannot fail to recall One Man, Two Gunvors, last year’s farce, that had us roaring with laughter.
The plot of Tons of Money is classic farce. Aubrey (Mike Nadajewski) lives in a well-appointed house (thanks to set designer Judith Bowden who also designed the beautiful dresses for the ladies) but he is seriously broke and his creditors have lost their sense of humour – they want to be paid. Fate is about to reprieve him with a big inheritance from a relative in Mexico. But if he gets any money, his creditors will grab it. His wife Louisa (Julia Couse) suggests that he fake his death and come come as his cousin Henery (Andre Morin) who is to get the money if Aubrey predeceases him. Done.
But complications set in. Aubrey’s cousin’s wife claims the late Aubrey acting as the present cousin Henery as her husband. And as if that were not bad enough, the real cousin Henery shows up very much alive. Aubrey has no choice but to fake another suicide. Things get more complicated when the watchful butler Sprules (Graeme Somerville) gets his brother to impersonate the Mexican cousin. Aubrey takes cover as a curate. It’s time to make a deal with the pretend cousin until they are interrupted by the real cousin from Mexico. It’s time to wrap up all those complications and I will not disclose them to you.
The actors try to generate energy and laughter to guffaw levels. There is physical comedy including pratfalls and a naked man running around the stage. We laugh, but the magic ingredient for making the audience roar is simply missing. There is polite laughter that grows into genuine merriment but no heartfelt guffaws. Director Eda Holmes tapped into some of the available resources of the play but, as they say under other circumstances, almost is not enough in a farce.
Tons of Money by Will Evans and Valentine continues in repertory until October 5, 2025, at the Royal George Theatre, Shaw Festival, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario. www.shawfest.com.

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