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and Reviews by Jeniva Berger covering the best of the Toronto entertainment scene! Updated weekly. |
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The
Stratford Festival of Canada 2007 Season
"Enduring tales, told and retold by the finest actors in the country"
King Lear Oklahoma! The Merchant of Venice An Ideal Husband To Kill a Mockingbird My One and Only The Comedy of Errors Othello Of Mice and Men A Delicate Balance The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead Shakespeare's Will The Odyssey Pentecost Richard Monette For theatre tickets and full season brochures, please phone the Stratford Festival box office at 1-800-567-1600. Brochures and tickets may also be ordered through the website at www.stratfordfestival.ca
Reviews
It's impossible to recapture the same kind of 1940's idealism that found a meeting ground between audiences and a musical like Oklahoma!, but what we can find in abundance in the Stratford Festival production of Oklahoma! is plenty of nostalgia for a time when musicals were wholesome and gregariously entertaining. The songs of Oklahoma! are legendary in musical theatre history and rank along with Carousel as among the best and most brilliant of Rodgers and Hammerstein's longtime partnership. Oklahoma!'s lyrics are deceptively simple, but they captured the essence of the itinerant cowboys who rode and roamed the land and the farmers who settled it. The politics of the American frontier with its upstart sometimes bloody rebels and its abrogated Indian lands were played down in the musical which was mainly the story of a romance between a young spirited girl and a free wheeling cowboy set against the ongoing dispute between the cowboys and the farmers. Just like Oklahoma! itself, there was plenty of room to expand, to let the characters develop beyond natural dimensions into a kind of stereotypical portrait of the western persona. And for the most part, it's what we see in director Donna Feore's sweeping production on the Stratford Festival stage, filled with pretty girls in long country gingham skirts who provide a nubile chorus for the headstrong Laurie, played by the wonderful Blythe Wilson, and virile cowboys who could dance the pants off anyone with spurs. Credit Feore with providing the athletic prowess through her own choreography in this production and it's lively and exhilarating to watch. But when Dan Chameroy as Curly opens the show with the lyrical, Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin', he seems to have stepped of a sound stage, less a hard riding man of the plains enraptured by a perfect summer's day than a handsome movie star cowboy who knows all the right gestures and moves. The same could be said of Lindsay Thomas's over eager and somewhat grating Ado Annie, a bird brain of a girl who can't say no to any guy who says such "purdy" things in the moonlight. It's the big comic role of the production, along with Jonathan Ellul's smooth talking peddler Ali Hakim. Ellul, with a great sense of comic timing, works in tandem with Ado Annie but winds up stealing the show from right under her upturned nose. It was a sign of the times when women comediennes of the 1940s and 1950s were often outlandish and usually overblown onstage or in the films, hence characters like Gertie Cummings (Stephanie Graham) whose high pitched nervous and unending giggle proves as much humor for us as chalk scratched on a blackboard. But there was enjoyment in watching Kyle Blair's effervescent Will Parker dance up a storm and twirl a lasso with Everything's Up to Date in Kansas City. Ado Annie's smitten cowboy, a look-alike of the film Oklahoma's dancing star, Gene Nelson, Blair is as athletic a dancer as Nelson was and gives rope twirling a good try though he wouldn't make the grade at the local rodeo let alone Kansas City. But everyone in the production could take a cue from Nora McLellan as Laurie's wise Aunt Eller, who becomes the heart and soul of the musical. McLellan is the only one in the show who acted like she would have been at home on the range, and sounded as normal as blueberry pie (wrong musical, right sentiment). For all the musical's attempts to remain true to the spirit of the original, director Donna Feore still managed some original touches which shows how well she can work within the framework of a classic and still give it some freshness. The long Out of Your Dreams ballet, usually done with a chorus and dancers impersonating Laurie and Curly, dug deeper into Laurie's nightmare with the actual lead performers taking part in the ballet. The object of the nightmare, Aunt Eller's handyman Judd Fry, played by David W. Keeley, whose prurient interest in Laurie causes his downfall, didn't make our skin crawl as Rod Steiger did in the film version, but was more pathetic than frightening, a lonely man pushed to the brink whose only pleasure lay in his photos of nude women and day dreams of those he couldn't have. Among the picnic baskets, country socials and work-a-day chores, Oklahoma! is a slice of apple pie Americana served up with beautiful music and homespun humor. Who knows whether it will survive into the next century the way 18th century opera has done for audiences today. Looking at it during a warm summer day in June, snug in the beauty of the Festival Theatre with Patrick Clark's set, a homestead that gave plenty of the room to the dancers on the thrust stage but still managed to give us a taste of the wider outdoors with his stunning cyclorama of light boxes resembling clouds, Oklahoma! is a taste of a a bygone era. And it still feels pretty good when that wind comes sweepin' down the plain. Oklahoma! plays in repertoire at the Festival Theatre until November 4.
It takes only a few moments for Lear to make a grievous error; mistaking his daughter Cordelia's honesty in her feelings for him as a lack of affection, at the same time believing his two elder daughters' unctuous expressions of love. You wonder how Lear can be so dim, especially since it's so patently clear to us that daughters Goneril and Regan are the shallowest of human beings. It's not that we're overly perceptive, it's just that the two actors portraying them, Wendy Robie as the manipulative Regan and Wenna Shaw as shrewish Goneril, are like witches from the Tales of the Darkside. You expect to see smoke billowing from their nostrils. Next to them, the fair Cordelia is indeed a paragon of virtue, but Sara Topham invests her with not only sweetness but grit, especially when she is disinherited in the cruelest manner by Lear, and is pawned off on the King of France as his penniless fiancee. With the field left to Goneril and Regan to dismantle their father of his servants, his horses, and his pride, the subplots begin to take hold and with them some of the best performances of the evening; Scott Wentworth's Earl of Gloucester, who surely has the most distasteful and least forgettable scene of the play when his eyes are put out by the Regan's husband, the dastardly Duke of Cornwall played like a 16th century hit man by Wayne Best. Gloucester has had no better luck than King Lear with his children, Edgar and his ambitious bastard son Edmund (Dion Johnstone) who will spread vicious rumors about Edgar causing a family rift that will leave open wounds. As Edgar, the disinherited son of Gloucester, Gareth Potter doesn't make much of an impression until his Edgar escapes into the wilds as Poor Tom, disguised as a wild man who will accompany the bereft, half mad Lear and become his soul mate. For a portrait of sheer dignity in the face of bedlam, there is Peter Donaldson's Earl of Kent, while Bernard Hopkins, one of the real treasures of the Stratford Festival, is a memorable Fool whose strength lies in his quiet wisdom, not his folly, and genuine love of Lear. This is also one production that offers us rationale as to the Fool's sudden disappearance. The story of King Lear is a story of mental and physical distintigration. Even the weather, the lightning thunderstorm of Act II that Sound Designer Jim Neal and Lighting designer Michael J. Whitfield create so splendidly that the walls of the Festival Theatre seem to be reverberating in its wake, echo the anger of the elements. Lear has been turned away from his daughters' castles with scarcely the bare necessities of life, and now, a ghost of his former self, he hovers between hallucination and reality. His plaintive cry says it all: "They told me I was everything - they lied." Shakespeare has set the play during the war between England and France, and just as treason is used as an excuse to imprison personal enemies, Lear and his precious Cordelia, whom he banished to France, have been sent to prison as traitors. There are few scenes in Shakespeare that are as indelible in the memory as Cordelia's death and Lear's pathetic ministrations to revive her. In Bedford's production, you catch your breath as the once mighty king in disbelief and horror tries frantically to coax life into her body again and again and again. It's a triumphant piece of acting. In the end, there are retributions; Goneril's and Regan's untimely but warranted deaths (pure Jacobean justice) and Edmund's confession of treachery as he lay dying. King Lear himself dies of a broken heart, but there is no glory in watching his final descent into bottomless grief. Like all great Shakesperean royals,
Festival Theatre All photos by David Hou
Oklahoma!
Music by Richard Rodgers, Book and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein, Based on the play Green Grow the Lilacs by Lynn Riggs, Original Dances by Agnes de Mille.
Directed and choreographed by Donna Feore. With Kyle Blair, The Merchant of Venice by William Shakespeare. Directed by Richard Rose. Starring Graham Greene as Shylock with Bernard Hopkins, John Innes, Severn Thompson and Scott Wentworth. Having unwisely
An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde. Directed by Richard Monette.
With Brian Bedford, Tom McCamus, Chick Reid, Dixie Seatle, David Snelgrove, Severn Thompson, Sara Topham and Brigit Wilson.
Sir Robert Chiltern is the ideal husband – witty, well-bred and adored by his loving wife. Conversely, Lord Arthur Goring is an idle philanderer and the despair of his long-suffering father. But when evidence surfaces of a dark secret in Sir Robert's past, each must decide: is it social convention or true love that makes for an ideal marriage?
July 31 to October 27; opens August 11, 2007.
Avon Theatre
The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare. Directed by Richard Monette. With Walter Borden, Bruce Dow, Allegra Fulton, Tom McCamus, Chick Reid, Steve Ross, David Snelgrove, Sophia Walker and Brigit Wilson. Who would have guessed that Antipholus's long-lost identical twin had just arrived in town? Or that his servant, Dromio, also has a newly-landed identical twin? Sheer confusion and delightful nonsense reign in Shakespeare's most madcap comedy, culminating in a series of misunderstandings that brings everyone to the brink of hysteria. The Stratford Festival of Canada's 200th Production of Shakespeare! May 17 to October 2;, opens June 2, 2007. The Tom Patterson Theatre
Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck. Directed by Martha Henry.With Philip akin, Jerry Franken, Graham Greene, Brian Hamman, Robert King, Jennifer Mawhinney, Brad Rudy, Stephen Russell, Nicolas Van Burek.
Deep in the dust of depression-era A Delicate Balance by Edward Albee. Directed by Diana Leblanc.
With James Blendick, Patricia Collins, David Fox, Michelle Giroux, Martha Henry, and Fiona Reid. Agnes and Tobias are engaged in a battle of wills with Agnes's hard-drinking sister, Claire, and their daughter, Julia, who is fleeing a failed marriage. The delicate balance of this small family is already in jeopardy – will the arrival of another couple, fleeing their own unnamed terror, destroy it completely? July 29 to September 23; opens August 9, 2007.
Studio Theatre
Shakespeare's Will by Vern These by Miles Potter. With Seana McKenna as Ann Hathaway.
On the eve of William Shakespeare's funeral, a solitary woman considers the poet's last will and testament. What emerges is the fascinating story of Anne Hathaway, wife to the world's The Odyssey by Derek Walcott. Directed by Peter Hinton.With
Barbara Barnes-Hopkins, Walter Borden, Allegra Fulton, Roy Lewis, Sophia Walker and Nigel Shawn Williams.
Matching wits with gods and conquering unspeakable terrors, Pentecost by David Edgar.
Directed by Mladen Kiselov. With
Dan Chameroy, Jonathan Goad, Adrienne Gould, Brian Hamman, Claire Jullien, Robert King, John Koensgen, Nora McLellan, Gordon S. Miller, Lucy Peacock, Brady Rudy, Stephen Russell and Andre Wills. Uncovered in an abandoned eastern-European church, a priceless painting ignites a fierce debate about nationalism and culture in a world rocked by political instability. When the church is invaded by a group of armed refugees seeking asylum, the debate turns deadly and the question remains: without art, how will we know who we are?
August 3 to September 21; opens August 10, 2007.
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You're doin' fine, Oklahoma!, even if you're light years away from the unbridled enthusiasm that marked the premiere of Rodgers and Hammerstein's 1943 post World War II musical. The new and better world dawning then was very much a part of the spirit of the country, mirrored in a musical set in the 1890's American frontier and the eve of the birth of a new state.
Performer Brian Bedford is best known to Stratford Festival of Canada audiences for his memorable roles in Restoration comedy where his superb timing has been unsurpassable. Enter Bedford as King Lear, the man of a divided royalty whose split second decision in the midst of anger causes him heartache and a loss worse than his kingdom, and you have a consummate actor with the same impeccable timing. True, King Lear is a mamoth role calling up every emotion which alone makes it the ultimate performance vehicle, but take away the ability to shade each emotion with depth and meaning and what sometime remains is a stentorian Lear who changes pitch. From Bedford's very first entrance, a kingly King Lear, complacent, secure and dressed in royal finery, his favorite daughter Cordelia on his arm, and his golden throne awaiting him, Bedford never lets go of our sensibilities or the stage which he will occupy for the better part of the slightly less than three hour running time. 
King Lear by William Shakespeare, directed by and starring Brian Bedford as King Lear, with
Wayne Best, Peter Donaldson, Bernard Hopkings, Dion Johnstone, Wendy Robie, Wenna Shaw, Sara Topham and Scott Wentworth.Dividing his kingdom among three daughters, an aging monarch makes a catastrophic error of judgment that plunges him and those around him into a terrible abyss of suffering. This heartrending drama of madness, loss and reconciliation is widely considered to be Shakespeare's greatest tragedy – perhaps even the greatest play ever written.
May 1 to October 28; opens May 28, 2007. 
Matt Cassidy, Mark Cassius, Dan Chameroy, Jonathan Ellul, Stephanie Graham, David W. Keeley, Jamie McKnight, Nora McLellan, Paul Nolan, Lindsay Thomas, Blythe Wilson and Barrie Wood. Raised in big-hearted turn-of-the century Oklahoma territory, spunky Laurey Williams spurns the affections of cowboy Curly McLain – only to fallinto the hands of malevolent hired hand Jud Fry. When unexpected tragedy strikes, farmers and cowmen alike must confront the untamed wilderness of the human heart.
April 10 to November 4; opens May 29, 2007. 
agreed to forfeit a pound of his own flesh should he fail to repay the moneylender Shylock, Antonio faces the knife when his ships are lost at sea. It is left to the resourceful heiress-turned-lawyer Portia to avert disaster in the thrilling courtroom conclusion to one of Shakespeare's most popular – and controversial – plays. May 5 to October 27; opens June 1, 2007. 
To Kill a Mockingbird.
Based upon the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Harper Lee 
My One and Only Music and lyrics by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin. Book by Peter Stone and Timothy S. Mayer. Original staging and choreography by Thommie Walsh and Tommy Tune. Directed by Michael Lichtefeld. With Mark Cassius, Cynthia Dale, David W. Keeley, Laird Mackintosh, Marcus Nance and Dayna Tekatch.
Daredevil pilot Billy Buck Chandler is determined to woo bathing beauty Edythe Herbert, star of a 1920's Hollywood style swimming/dancing extravaganza. But Edythe's boss, the evil Prince Nikki, has other plans. Crammed with exotic locations, outrageous plot twists and heart-stopping dance numbers, this zany comedy features beloved Gershwin tunes like " 'S Wonderful," and "Nice Work if You Can Get It." May 12 to October 28; opens May 31, 2007. 
Othello by William Shakespeare. Directed by David Latham. With Philip Akin, Jerry Franken, Jonathan Goad, Claire Jullien, John Koensgen, Gordon S. Miller, Lucy Peacock, Brad Rudy, Stephen Russell and Jeffrey Wetsch. The overwhelming and sometimes destructive power of human emotion becomes all too clear when an honourable soldier, misled by treachery and consumed by jealousy, is driven to murderous lengths. A sinister and vindictive plot plants the seeds of doubt to corrupt a pure and honest love, with devastating consequences.
May 21 to September 22; opens June 2, 2007. 
California, an extraordinary friendship sustains two itinerant farmhands as they dream of a better life. When tragedy erupts, George and Lennie discover that – like mice in the maze of modern life – they will forever be at the mercy of forces beyond their control.
June 5 to September 22; opens June 21, 2007. 
The Blonde, the Brunette and the Vengeful Redhead by Robert Hewett. Directed by Geordie Johnson. With Lucy Peacock. An adulterous husband, a meddlesome neighbour and a dropped ice-cream cone are among the circumstances that combine to shatter the life of suburban housewife Rhonda Russell. In this acclaimed Australian play, Rhonda's loss of control ricochets through the lives of seven different characters – all portrayed by the same performer.
May 17 to August 26; opens May 31, 2007.
greatest playwright – and a woman hiding dark sorrows of her own.
June 23 to September 20; opens July 7, 2007.
Odysseus will stop at nothing to reach his island home. Nobel Prize-winning author Derek Walcott fuses the rich traditions of the Caribbean into an ingenious modern retelling of one of the greatest epics of the western world.
July 27 to September 28; opens August 8, 2007.