Anne of Green Gables At The Stratford Festival
I had any number of nits to pick with Anne of Green Gables, adapted and directed by Kat Sandler from the 1908 novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery, but in the end none of that mattered.
Swept along in a shameless sea of sentiment and schmaltz, buoyed by a smashing performance in the title role by Caroline Toal, and enjoying a contact high from the enthusiastic enjoyment of a theatre full of young children, I fell in love – reluctantly – with Anne of Green Gables.
This world premiere, at the Festival’s Avon Theatre, of a new adaptation of Montgomery’s tale is part of the Schulich Children’s Plays series that the Stratford Festival produces each season.
For those who are unfamiliar with Anne of Green Gables (I am one of them) it concerns the adventures of a feisty, precocious, and outspoken red-headed orphan (shades of Annie!), who is by her own estimation something of an ugly duckling.
Anne (with an “e” as she is wont to remind folks) has been sent by the orphanage to the Prince Edward Island farmstead of sister and brother Marilla (Sarah Dodd) and Matthew Cuthbert (Tim Campbell) who had specified that they needed a boy to help around the farm.
Disappointment gradually gives way to acceptance and eventually to a deep love as we watch Anne grow to become an academically gifted and more or less self-assured young woman of eighteen.
Adaptor Sandler has chosen to use an awkward framing device. (That’s one nit.) As we enter the theatre we discover we are attending a meeting of the Anne of Green Gables book club run by the ever-endearing Maev Beatty.
The members of the club, young people played by adults, balk at the idea that the beloved children’s novel will simply be read and decree that they will tell the story in their own way.
And so Anne of Green Gables the play begins. The club members, referred to in the programme as Chorus, take turns narrating the action (another nit) and jumping in to play a variety of supporting roles.
Alas, director Sandler has asked the Chorus to endow their supporting parts with some rather egregious overacting (yet another nit). She has also provided them with a lot of lame jokes. (I will now stop counting nits.) They irked me but went over extremely well with the target audience. The fart gags were a sure-fire winner.
In the second act, Sandler abruptly shifts the action from the turn of the last century to the present. It’s a device that is good for a few cheap laughs but not much else.
Fortunately, where it really counted, in the scenes depicting Anne’s relationship with her adoptive family and the kids with whom she grows up, director Sandler shows her mettle. Working with a terrific cast, she brings out the very human essence of what could be a very hackneyed story.
It helps that she has Caroline Toal to carry the show. Toal, who is making a most impressive debut with the Festival, wonderfully embodies the spirit of a young girl seemingly destined to be a woman of immense power and promise. It’s easy to understand why no less an authority than Mark Twain pronounced her “the dearest and most lovable child in fiction since the immortal Alice.”
Sarah Dodd and Tim Campbell bring the Cuthbert household to vivid life. Dodd is incisive in evoking Marilla’s flinty determination born of her hardscrabble farm life. She makes every reluctant step of her gradual warming to Anne crystal clear.
As the kinder, gentler Matthew, Campbell is wonderfully endearing, not to mention quite funny.
Anne’s schoolmates, Gilbert Blythe (Jordin Hall) and Diana Barry (Julie Lumsden) are somewhat less successful, largely because of Sandler’s “improvements” to the story and her aforementioned tendency to urge Chorus members to overdo it. Still, they acquit themselves well with what they are tasked to do.
Then there is Montgomery’s underlying story, which may seem to be composed of every cliché you’ve seen in all those Hallmark-worthy growing-up-coming-of-age movies and tv shows. As much as sophisticates tend to look down on this sort of thing, the simple truth is that these time-honoured tropes work.
Sandler recognizes that. So when, for example, the oil and water antipathy between Anne and Gilbert melts into true love the audience erupts in rapturous applause. Sentimental old fool that I am, I shed a quiet tear.
Joanna Yu has contributed a wonderful two-level set for the Cuthbert’s Green Gables. It received a well deserved round of applause when it was revealed as the act-opening curtain was dropped. Yu also created the very nice costumes.
Davida Tkach has lit the show most amusingly – I loved the way the set was suffused in red when Anne was out of sorts – and for once I have praise for the sound design, this one by Debashis Sinha. If the show was miked, you coulda fooled me.
The six-year-old Anne of Green Gables expert who sat next to me assured me that the show was very good and just like the book. She was not alone in her approbation. The Avon was packed with very well-behaved young-uns who clearly delighted in every twist and turn of the story.
It looks like the Festival has another hit on its hands.
Anne of Green Gables continues at the Avon Theatre through October 25, 2025. For more information and to purchase tickets, visit the Stratford Festival website.
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