Cymbeline at Stratford Shakespeare Festival (2012)
Cymbeline If you’ve never seen William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline there’s a good reason for that. The play is devilishly difficult to do. Start with a large, sprawling cast filled with roles that would challenge even the best actors. Then add a complex, intricate and, to modern tastes, sometimes ludicrous plot. Top it all off with some […]
Twelfth Night at Stratford Shakespeare Festival
Set against the backdrop of an enormous smashed mirror, McAnuff’s delirious Illyria is home to a mismatched menagerie of types and tropes that seem to have been stitched together from several plays and periods. By switching the first two scenes of the play, McAnuff seems to be alerting us from the beginning that this will not be your father’s Twelfth Night.
Titus Andronicus at Stratford Shakespeare Festival
This is not to say that the production is bad. Indeed, this is a fairly straight-from-the-shoulder reading that lets the play speak for itself. The director, Darko Tresnjak, uses the long narrow stage of the Patterson to good effect and his staging of the visit of Revenge, Murder, and Rapine to the “mad” Andronicus is terrific. He mutes some of the gorier moments with well-timed blackouts, but there’s still more than enough blood and violence to prompt one theatergoer I overheard to declare, “This is my last Titus.”
Shakespeare’s Will at Stratford Shakespeare Festival
[More…] Next to nothing is known about the private lives of Shakespeare and Anne Hatahaway, save that she was some seven years his elder, that they had three children, one of whom died young, and that they spent most of their adult lives apart. So most of what Thiessen depicts is pure invention. In his fantasy, they agreed to what we might call an “open marriage,” that he went to London and took on a male lover while she made do with casual flings in the barn with passing strangers. Their son Hamnet died in a swimming accident, a misfortune for which Shakespeare blamed his wife and for which he got back at her by bequeathing her is “second-best bed.”
Richard III at Stratford Shakespeare Festival
First, it must be said that McKenna is a much more than adequate Richard. So much so that I and several companions were left wondering why, after demonstrating that this woman could take up one of Shakespeare’s greatest villains and make you forget her gender almost immediately, the director Miles Potter (who is also McKenna’s husband) didn’t ask more of her.
The Misanthrope at Stratford Shakespeare Festival
Under the confident direction of David Grindley, the production puts Moliere’s text front and center, although fleshing out the milieu of his privileged characters might have added a welcome layer. Grindley is ably abetted by John Lee Beatty’s stately unit set and the gorgeous costumes by Robin Fraser Paye are almost a show by themselves. I dare say the costume budget alone was larger than the annual salaries of all but the very richest in the audience.
The Merry Wives of Windsor at Stratford Shakespeare Festival
Falstaff is played by long-time Festival star Geraint Wyn Davies and his performance is an unalloyed delight from start to finish. Even so, Tom Rooney almost steals the show with his splendid turn as the might-be cuckolded Ford.
Hosanna at Stratford Shakespeare Festival
Hosanna I was so captivated by Michel Tremblay’s For The Pleasure Of Seeing Her Again at the 2010 Stratford Shakespeare Festival that I looked forward to seeing Hosanna, a 1973 play that I gather helped establish his reputation as a major French-Canadian playwright. It turns out I had seen it before. Not this play specifically, […]
The Homecoming at Stratford Shakespeare Festival
The Homecoming Harold Pinter is a playwright of such profound idiosyncrasy that he has his very own adjective – Pinteresque. And if ever there was a Pinter play that deserves that soubriquet it’s The Homecoming, which is being given a top drawer, if somewhat flawed, revival by the Stratford Shakespeare Festival at their downtown Avon […]
Grapes of Wrath At Stratford Shakespeare Festival
This is tough theater to watch but if you can take it (and maybe even if you can’t) it is theater that demands to be seen.