Something Rotten At The Stratford Festival
Donna Feore’s Something Rotten, the big hit of the 2024 season, has been remounted this season along with another of Feore’s smash hits, Guys and Dolls, to celebrate, one can only assume, Antoni Cimolino’s last season with the Stratford Festival.
Cribbing shamelessly from my 2024 review, Something Rotten is the deliriously, kaleidoscopically funny musical by brothers Karey (music, lyrics, book) and Wayne Kirkpatrick (music, lyrics) and John O’Farrell (book). It pokes scabrously transgressive fun at the cult of “The Bard,” while at the same time taking loving satiric aim at most of the famous musicals of our lifetime.
It tells the entirely fictional tale of the aptly named Bottom brothers, Nick (Mark Uhre) and Nigel (Henry Firmston), playwrights and wannabe theatrical impresarios in Elizabethan London who struggle in the shadow of William Shakespeare (Jeff Lillico), depicted as an arrogant, self-absorbed rock star. The Bottoms loathe their rival’s undeserved fame, not to mention his uncanny ability to anticipate their every new idea.
The Bottoms are about to lose the patronage of Lady Clapham (this time ‘round played by Nehassaiu deGannes), so in desperation Nick seeks out the soothsayer Nostradamus (Dan Chameroy). Not the famous one but his nephew Thomas who is, not to mince words, several cards short of a tarot deck.
Asked to predict the next “big thing” in theatre, Nostradamus peers into his cloudy crystal ball and, in perhaps the show’s best number, envisions . . . MUSICALS!
Nick takes the bait and the rest of Something Rotten cascades into a convoluted plot that includes an abortive first stab at Elizabethan musical comedy (would you believe The Black Death?), a duplicitous, thieving William Shakespeare, Nick’s heroic wife, the proto-feminist Bea (Starr Domingue), and an evil Puritan (Juan Chioran) who wants to see the Bottoms topless, that is beheaded.
In a romantic subplot with echoes of Romeo and Juliet, Nigel, the more grounded and talented of the brothers Bottom, and Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane, as Portia, a Puritan girl with a politically incorrect love of poetry, make a lovely couple. Their entire arc is pure theatrical hokum that’s as old as the hills and it works beautifully. I was every bit as smitten this time as I was in 2024.
Something Rotten is littered with references to the Shakespeare canon – the aforementioned riffs on Romeo and Juliet, a money lender named Shylock (Steve Ross), a trial scene, a woman disguised as a lawyer – all of which allow those of us who barely passed English Lit to pat ourselves on the back for picking up on them.
The real subject of Something Rotten, however, is the dog-eat-dog world of show biz rivalry with a special emphasis on the American musical. I lost count of the number of musicals referenced in the script and in Feore’s witty choreography. I’m sure I missed a few.
In two razzle-dazzle would-be show stopping numbers (“A Musical,” and ”Make An Omelette”), Feore uses every choreographic device in her not inconsiderable bag of tricks, including an obligatory (and breathtaking) tumbling run by Devon Michael Brown.
I seem to have bad luck with Something Rotten. In 2024, the first time I saw it Steve Ross was out. This time around both Mark Uhre and Ross were replaced by, respectively, Eric Abel and Stephen Patterson.
The good news is that Patterson is a terrific Nick Bottom. He has laboured diligently for ten seasons with the Festival as part of the ensemble in various musicals and in minor roles. In Something Rotten his not inconsiderable skills are on full display. The admiration of his fellow cast members was on full display during the curtain call.
Maybe, just maybe, with his stellar “the show must go on” contribution to Something Rotten, and in the time-honoured show biz tradition, a star is born.
While Able is perfectly fine as Shylock, if perhaps a bit too young, I missed him as Robin, one of the players in the Bottoms’ theatre troupe. It’s one of those small parts that an actor of Abel’s quality can elevate into something special.
But not to worry. I will surely, inevitably, be seeing Something Rotten again (and perhaps again) this season. The Festival has a way of stealing the trash that is my purse and rewarding me with shows that stand up to repeat viewing.
If you can only see one show at Stratford this year, you can’t miss with this one. As I said in 2024, those with weak bladders will be well advised to wear absorbent undergarments.
Something Rotten continues at The Stratford Festival’s Festival Theatre through October 31, 2026. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the Stratford Festival website.
Footnote: I do have one complaint about this edition of Something Rotten. Sound designer Haley Parcher seems to have solved the thorny problem of how to crank the volume up past eleven. I found it exceeding the pain level in many of the musical numbers. Forewarned is forearmed.
For a complete index of reviews CLICK HERE.
Don’t miss another review or blog post! SUBSCRIBE HERE
