It was an omen the Bard himself might have marshaled to good effect: No sooner do I open my program in the storied Festival Theatre than a flyer for Jersey Boys, now playing Toronto, tumbles out. The Stratford Shakespeare Festival, in our summer of economic discontent, is feeling keenly the edge of the budgetary knife. Repertoire includes only three Shakespeare plays, all of them dependable hits: Macbeth, Julius Caesar and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. No Troilus and Cressida or King John to light up the eyes of the hardliner. No Cymbeline or Coriolanus to make a Montrealer scoff at two tanks of gas.
Yet after a 48-hour, four-play blitz, I am appeased. Des McAnuff, sole artistic director of the festival since last year, might be a man of musicals, but Stratford production values remain firm in all genres. They turn out to be the salvation of McAnuff’s own Macbeth at the Festival Theatre, set in mid-20th-century Africa, and costumed substantially with military fatigues. It is a conceit you forget at the first mention of Scotland. Nor does Colm Feore in the title role turn out to be such an advantage. He leaves the depths of the soliloquies undisturbed. (Are Macbeth and Cyrano de Bergerac, in regular alternation, too much to ask of one actor?)
Yanna McIntosh, as the missus, is likewise underwhelming and supporting performances are mostly just acceptable. So we are left to enjoy the fine young witches (one of them, cleverly, blind), who conspire with sci-fi video screens to make the cauldron scene a marvel of eeriness; and a splendidly theatrical banquet with abracadabra appearances and disappearances of Banquo’s ghost. With clear enunciation from Feore (who, after all, is an old pro) and the inevitably exciting conclusion, this Macbeth merits three respectable stars out of five.
You can add one for The Importance of Being Earnest at the Avon. Brian Bedford creates a majestic personification of Lady Bracknell with his authoritarian speech and granitic features. (I shall take this opportunity to air the theory of Ezra Schabas, biographer of Sir Ernest MacMillan, that this towering figure of Canadian music pioneered the drag Lady Bracknell tradition in a prison-camp performance in Germany.) The others behave splendidly under Bedford’s direction, although the role of Jack Worthing, midway between aesthete and serious man of society, remains tough to nail. Take note that Bedford is also presenting a one-man show based on the life of Oscar Wilde.
For truly earnest drama there is The Three Sisters. The vast runway that is the thrust stage of the Tom Patterson Theatre makes room in the first act for a social three-ring circus. Snippets of conversation bounce from one sector to another – a vivid realization of Chekhov’s fragmented style. Why does Martha Henry (another thespian-turned-director) push the action upstage for Act 2? Lucy Peacock is much the strongest sister as Masha. She demonstrates (with Tom McCamus as Vershinin) how erotically charged the removal of shoes can be. I suppose I must blame myself for failing to feel strong sympathy for Russian layabouts who complain constantly but do nothing to relieve the tedium of their lives.
Back to my Jersey Boys flyer. It fell out of the program for West Side Story, the 1957 masterpiece sometimes (if implausibly) said to have destroyed the American musical with its unsurpassable excellence. I knew Leonard Bernstein’s music from concert performances and was chagrined to be reminded that the complete score adds relatively little to the highlights. What this staging by Gary Griffin (director) and Sergio Trujillo (choreographer) offers above all are superb dance sequences and stylized fights.
The sound of the orchestra players from their upstairs perch is not robust, but musical values (under conductor Rick Fox) are steady. Chilina Kennedy is a sweet-voiced and palpably idealistic Maria. If Paul Nolan as Tony is a middle-of-the-road vocalist, he compensates with his athletic presence. Jennifer Rias is the true triple threat as Anita. Of course, this famous update of Romeo and Juliet might be added, with an asterisk, to the list of 2009 Shakespeare offerings. But I could not help reflecting on how the moralizing of Maria at the end is no substitute for the sublimely tragic conclusion of the real thing.
Musicals have traditionally done well at Stratford. Alas, their demographics are not built for the future. The median age at West Side Story matinée I saw was alarmingly high. Shakespeare is surely the best cross-generational investment. Dare we hope that the paltry three productions of 2009 represent the barest minimum? Dip below that threshold, and the town of Stratford, ON might as well reincorporate itself as New Haven. Ah, my kingdom for The Winter’s Tale.
The Stratford Shakespeare Festival runs through the end of October. For more information visit the Stratford Festival.
