The Shaw Festival is off to a very strong 2008 season. As always, the plays come mainly from George Bernard Shaw and his contemporaries, and include one of Shaw's major plays, along with a long-lost gem or two. One running theme this year concerns the effect of the 20th century's two great wars on social attitudes and standards.

The closest to a classic among the three plays I've seen so far is J.B. Priestley's "An Inspector Calls," written as World War II was ending. The world had come apart, but Priestley set the play in 1912 to look ahead implicitly by celebrating a daughter's engagement at a family dinner. All appears to be well but assumptions about self, society, and an orderly world will soon come into question.

The taut production is firmly anchored in the play's mix of intelligence and passion as truths bare themselves - or do they? On the surface this is a routine whodunit, at least for a while. A young woman dies, and Inspector Goole comes to make inquiries of the prosperous Birling family. Coincidence is essential to the play's effect because each family member had surprisingly consequential dealings with the dead woman.

Priestley explores the connectedness between people and the responsibilities it brings, even to strangers. In addition to the ambiguity of our assumptions and knowledge, this is also a play about shadowy memories, forgotten choices, and the unreliability of time. It takes the playing of tricks and the shifting of identities very seriously because they give each character an opportunity to face truths and make changes.

Aside from having the cast do some dimly lit but blessedly brief posturing at the start of each act, Jim Mezon directs as he used to act: surely and intensely. He uses Peter Hartwell's effective two-level set to focus on individual characters as the inspector, played forcefully by Benedict Campbell, draws them out of their dissembling into the foreground light.

The entire cast - especially Mary Haney as the self-righteous Mrs. Birling and Moya O'Connell as daughter Sheila, who struggles to face the truth even about herself - brings fine ensemble acting to a play in which no one is exempt from blame. Only Peter Hutt as Arthur Birling has a tendency to add moments of caricature to his performance.

"After the Dance," by the fine British playwright Terence Rattigan, had a short run in London in 1939, and then faded from view until British television revived it in 1992. It's had several revivals since then, and deserves them. It's a fine play given a very convincing performance.

As World War II began, Rattigan's play attacked the hedonism that followed World War I but inexplicably lasted through the Great Depression until Hitler's invasion of Poland and, a year later, the London Blitz. But that was yet to come. A wealthy couple, contentedly drinking itself into cirrhosis at endless parties, refuses to face anything that might interfere with its own pleasures and desires. The couple is also enormously likeable, especially David Scott-Fowler, played charmingly by Patrick Galligan. Into this oasis of drinking and willful decadence comes a romantic innocent, Helen Banner (Marla McLean), who falls in love with David and sets out to get him. Her innocence does not preclude a backbone of steel. David and his wife, Joan, have as a permanent houseguest John Reid, a fellow drunk but also a wise fool, played with great gusto and uncommon wit by Neil Barclay. Reid outstays his welcome when he starts to tell the truth to people he cares for.

Rattigan's play is a cousin of sorts to Noel Coward's 1930 masterpiece, "Private Lives," even though Rattigan wrote it eight years later - and that makes all the difference. Coward's characters are part of what Gertrude Stein called the "lost generation"; Rattigan's persist in living that way even though the world has changed. Director Christopher Newton understands the differences as he shapes the production with a dark undertone that suggests that the dance is out of step and the party has gone on for too long.

"The Stepmother," by forgotten playwright Githa Sowerby, had a single performance in 1924. Then it literally disappeared until somebody stumbled upon it in a box in the basement of Samuel French, Inc., the theatrical publisher. The production at Shaw is the play's North American premier. It hasn't been staged in 84 years.

Less than a decade after World War I, when women's place in society was becoming less predictable, a young woman of means leaves her estate, not to her conniving husband, Eustace, but to her daughters' governess, Lois Relph, played with great conviction and dignity by Claire Jullien. Eustace marries Lois to lay claim to the money. Ten years later, Lois finds herself cornered by Eustace's debts, the vulnerability of the dressmaking business she has built, and one of her stepdaughter's desire to marry. Although Lois is the antithesis of the stereotypical wicked stepmother, she is no saint. She equivocates at crucial moments, and she struggles against the constraints that still confronted any woman, her own history of limited means, and her husband's bullying. The complexity and deeply felt emotionalism of Lois' character is central to the power of this early feminist work.

At the same time, Eustace is little more than a stock villain. I expected him to twirl his moustache and mutter, "Curses, foiled again," at any moment. Only Blair Williams' insinuating performance made the character at all interesting to watch. His way of sticking his hands in his pockets, rounding his shoulders slightly, and striding away from his adversary - and the truth - embodied the character he portrayed.

In other words, Sowerby conceived a play with a modernist sensibility but wrote it as if melodrama was still in style. The only ambiguity comes at the end, when Eustace's machinations fail and Lois is free to marry the man she has come to love. Can she marry as an independent woman or has the world drained the spirit out of her? Will he treat her as an equal? Fade to black.

As usual, the staging in the Court House Theatre's small space is cleverly done. Designer Camellia Koo kept turning a single set of chairs and tables to take us from sitting-room to office to neighbor's flat in three blinks of an eye.

Check back in a few weeks for Michael Lasser's second review of Shaw's 2008 season.

The Shaw Festival

Through November 2

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada

800-511-SHAW, shawfest.com