The Way of the World
Stratford Shakespeare Festival, Ontario, 1976
Role: Mirabell

Jeremy moved to Canada in 1976 and performed in two productions of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival -- a theater extravaganza that spans six months each year.

He appeared as Mirabell in The Way of the World and had the dual role of Theseus and Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream.

The Way of the World is play by William Congreve. It is a Restoration-era drama, and Time magazine noted that "Congreve was the master dramatist of the genre and of its convoluted mechanics. Plots, subplots, stratagems, backfiring intrigues and unmaskings make up The Way of The World."

The magazine further described the plot:

The superannuated but insatiably lustful Lady Wishfort (Jessica Tandy) controls a fortune and has an itch for the philanderer Mirabel (Jeremy Brett). He, in turn, has fallen in love with her niece Millamant (Maggie Smith) and schemes to blackmail Lady Wishfort in order to secure her consent to his marriage to Millamant. That is just about what happens.

The play opened June 8, 1976, and the next day's review in the New York Times said:

The staging of The Way of the World, while perhaps a little long by contemporary standards, admirably sustained the play, gave it a style and period and, yet -- particularly in the key relationship between Millament and Mirabell -- offered Congreve's satirical posturings with a contemporaneousness that at time almost startled. The intrigues -- both amorous and mercenary -- could have been taking place in New York in 1976 almost as easily as in London in 1700.

Mr. Phillips stresses the play's formality -- for Congreve was a mixture of a wit, a moralist, a dancing master and a pedant -- and yet encourages his players to go beneath the surface superficialities to the realities within that make Congreve not merely a craftsman of his time but also a playwright of lasting delight.

The performance was, as it had to be, dominated by Millament, and here Maggie Smith has a role that is tailored to her merits. ... Jeremy Brett's Mirabell had all the manly virtues and foppish overtones that the role demands. A decent man in a naughty world, Mirabell is a giant of moral compromise, and Mr. Brett, smiling but never smirking, makes him just so.

Wikipedia page about the play // Full text of the play