Stratford Festival | johnageddes

This week I treated myself to a binge of Theatre at the Stratford (Ontario) Festival.

On Wednesday I took in six hours of Shakespeare! I was totally absorbed in the matinee performance of King Lear, recalling lines from when I studied it in Grade 13 (fifty years ago). I had seen William Hutt as Lear back then and have always wondered if anyone else could match his interpretation. Colm Feore certainly is up to the task. Later this month I start rehearsal for the Kings Town Players production of August: Osage County. I thought that the Weston family was about as dysfunctional as it gets – but after three hours with the Lear’s and the Gloucesters, I think that Shakespeare’s bunch take the prize.

The bare thrust stage at the Festival Theatre converted to a summer garden party for Midsummer Night’s Dream. As the audience came in, actors as partygoers, mingled and chatted with them.

That evening, after a great summer meal on a downtown patio, I returned to the theatre to find the stage transformed from its classical bare bones into a colourful outdoor garden. Midsummer Night’s Dream was was presented as if it were a play put on by friends for a couple celebrating their wedding. In keeping with 2014, the married couple was interracial and two men. Even in the play, Lysander (written by Shakespeare as a male role, part of the central love triangle) is played by a woman, as a woman.

This adds a whole new wrinkle to the play and reminded me of a concert that my daughter and I went to earlier this year in Toronto. It was part of the Luminato Festival. Created by Rufus Wainwright it was entitled “If I Loved You” – men singing traditional Broadway (love) songs, sometimes to each other. By intermission the gender thing had disappeared and it was quite remarkable to hear songs like “We Kiss in a Shadow” or “People Will Say We’re In Love” or “There’s a Place for Us” , songs you usually associate as duets between a man and a woman, being sung by two men. (Other performers besides Rufus, included Josh Grobin, Brent Carver, Boy George and Steven Page).

But I digress.

Many of the cast of Lear were also in “Dream”. It was really fun to see the actor who played Edgar on the heath in the afternoon be Titania, the Fairy Queen at night. I particularly enjoyed Mike Shara, who, in King Lear, played a nasty Cornwall, gouging out Gloucester’s eyes but in the evening was a silly lanky lovestruck Demetrius in torn jeans. Gloucester played by Scott Wentworth had also recovered by 8pm to join the party. The remarkable Stephen Ouimette is the Fool in Lear and Bottom in “Dream”. His comedic timing rivals Lucille Ball. It is always a pleasure to watch him perform.

And kudos to our Kingston friend, Brett Christopher, who was Assistant Director for this creative and engaging production.

The same stage prior to the opening of Crazy For You.

On Thursday afternoon I took my 94 year old Dad, my daughter (won’t say her age) and my 6 year old granddaughter to see Crazy For You. Once again the main stage had been transformed into something completely different. We were in the second row and right beside one of the downstage exits so it practically put us in the performance.

Dad’s vision isn’t good and I was not sure if he was snoozing or just resting his eyes at one point as 30 energetic performers about 8 feet away from us sang their lungs out and tap danced. On a couple of occasions, he did look up and, in a stage whisper (quite literally as we were almost ON the stage), say
“Boy, they sure can dance, can’t they?”

Aspiring starlet

Emma was entranced and clapped vigorously after each number. Some of the smiling, actors made eye contact with her when they were tap dancing their heart out near the front of the stage and one gave her a little wave during the curtain call which Emma returned. I wondered if they were looking down and seeing Emma and thinking fondly of their dreams to be dancers on a stage like this when they grew up. I told Emma that when she was doing something like this when she was an adult she must remember to wink at the little girls in the audience who are dreaming of being up there some day.

I am awed by the energy and talent and creativity at the Stratford Festival. I can’t believe how smoothly and quickly the stage transforms in front of you between scenes – like magic. I also marvel at the actors who (seemingly) effortlessly put on hours of performance as two completely different characters, making each role fresh and exciting.

The visit to Stratford Festival 2014 was, indeed, a memorable treat.

Stephen Ouimette (left) as Bottom, Evan Buliung as Titania and Jonathan Goad as Oberon in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. In the same afternoon these three were in King Lear playing the Fool, Edgar and Kent. Photo by Erin Samuell. (Stratford Festival website)

I came across a couple of photos buried deep in my computer’s hard drive this week that were taken in 1953. I was six that year.

Halloween party 1953. I am on the chair by the TV.

I remember the circumstances of one of them. We lived in at 448 Mornington Ave in London, Ontario and this was a Halloween party for me and my friends in the neighborhood. It looks like we were all dressed as hobos. Hobo costumes may seem to be a bit unimaginative but they were not expensive to create.

A television was a new item in Canadian homes. The first CBC television stations opened just the year before, in 1952. The local station had only 4 hours of programming per day and the rest of the time it was a black and white test pattern.

I am not sure if I had ever been to a movie. Play was in a sandbox in the back yard. My imagination would have been stimulated by picture books like Winnie the Pooh, Peter Pan and my favourite of all – Nursery Tales That Children Love. I still have that book. I smells a bit musty but I treasure it as something from my childhood. Inside the front cover is an inscription – “TO JOHN, FROM GRAMP.” And I did love those stories. The Gingerbread Boy, Peter Rabbit, The Three Little Pigs. My favourite was Little Black Sambo – probably now banned as being politically incorrect. But maybe it set me dreaming of Africa even then.

My mom (anyone who knew her will be able to image this) had decided that to liven up the Halloween party we would all go down into the basement in the dark and she would pass around little bowls of stuff that were supposed to represent body parts. Cold spaghetti was brains. Peeled grapes were suppose to be eyeballs. My Mom was not as creepy as this now sounds. In addition she had decide to make the basement dark and spooky by tying a piece of colored cloth around the bare light bulb that lit the basement stairs. Mid way through the ghost story, the cloth caught fire. We abandoned the bowls of body parts and scrambled upstairs and outside to safety. I don’t think Mom tried that trick again.

This photo of the newly crowned Queen Elizabeth II hung in every school classroom.

Earlier in 1953 Queen Elizabeth was crowned, her father, King George having died the previous year. I remember playing in the back yard on that June day and admiring the wooden nickel that we had been given at school to commemorate the occasion. I layed on the grass watching the clouds whiz by and knowing that something historical was happening that day but having no real sense of what if was.

I was the same age as Prince Charles. I used to think that maybe some day we could be friends. I did shake hands with him and chat ever so briefly when he and Diana visited Kingston in 1991. That was as chummy as we got. Charles probably doesn’t remember the moment as vividly as I do. His hand was not soft and princely but rough and more like that of a gardener. Mine was probably sweaty like so many others he had encountered.

The first stage of the Stratford Festival in 1953

The Stratford festival opened in 1953. My grandparents had friends in Stratford named Helen and Bob, who were somehow involved with the festival and they attended early performances that were done in a big tent. They went to parties with the likes of Tyrone Guthrie and Alec Guinness who starred in the first production of Richard III.

Although I was only six, I walked to school myself. It was about eight blocks away and over a level railway crossing for the main CP line. Today parents line up in the schoolyard to scoop up their kids as they emerge from school. Innocence (or at least the feeling of innocence) lost and replaced now by paranoia and suspicion.

Johnny and Bobby late summer 1953.

My cat was named Tippy. My brother was/is named Bob. Both were about 18 months old. My grandparents were ten years younger than I am now and I thought of them as old. I now have five grandchildren of my own.

I was probably having fun at that Halloween party and have had a lot more fun over the past 60 years.

Time flies when you’re having fun.