Awfully cold in Stratford this morning: clear and sunny but a cool 6 degrees above zero, and very windy. Are we the 31st of May, less than 3 weeks away from the beginning of summer? We went for our usual 5km run, this time in the Avondale Cemetery. Quiet! Reading tombstones while running by - a bit of a morbid distraction, but “demographically” revealing... Very large cemetery; probably more people here than living in town!...
Bartholomew Fair (preview) http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/plays/bartholomew.cfm
Delightfully funny! By Ben Jonson. In prose; about his times, unlike Shakespeare; 33 characters in play; came late in Jonson’s writing career, in 1614, different from previous ones. Making fun of the so-called “morally superior class” of the day. Does not either spare the travails of the lower, drunken, stealing bums! But in the end everybody gets together and everyone is invited to self-righteous, proven-to-be-a-fool character’s house for dinner. Compassion; madness; freedom; liberation; deliciously funny; a view of a slice of life; still very much with us today. First play of the lot this year, but definitely a pleasing surprise.
Macbeth (season opening) http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/plays/macbeth.cfm
Dark journey, dark play, dark side of humanity. 3rd direction by Des. Distillation of S; stripped of all unnecessary things; Colm Fiore as Macbeth – rather submissive, as if knowing this is all bad. Happened in the 11th century. Dark hole of human nature at its worst! Cyrano is the antithesis of the Scottish King! Elegantly streamlined!
Macbeth – transposed into Africa, post-colonial period...does it work? The theme of war and civil turmoil offer commonality, and it does allow for great dramatic sound and light effects: cannon shots, grenades, machine guns, jeep on the stage, etc...It is when this setting has to accommodate the original text (which is not transposed) and some of the props of the original play (e.g. swords) that it unravels, perhaps reaching its most incongruous point when one of the protagonists in Macduff’s camp faces Macbeth with a sword, and gets killed by a gunshot! (Someone is reminded of a similar scene in the first instalment of the movie Indiana Jones!) The stretch may be too much, and it does steal some credibility from the play... It is a very dark play, and one would wish to be able to fully appreciate the dialogue throughout between Macbeth and his wife, but the English is so thick (and I gather it is not simply because of it not being my maternal tongue: it is true for Anglophones as well!) Because of that perhaps, did not “feel” the play as much as I would have liked. Great music though.
West Side Story (preview) http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/plays/westside.cfm
Loved it! All the characters of youth are so well rendered: frustration, dreams, ambition, love, impetuosity, innocence, violence. And of course the songs, all hits by now!
Cynthia likes to say that according to Norman Jewison, who saw the play, it is the best one ever (better than the one currently performed on Broadway – we will take his word for it!)
The importance of being Earnest (opening) http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/plays/earnest.cfm
So Wilde! A culmination for him – he was to die only a few years later, having purged his 2-years’ hard labour sentence for “gross indecency”, in self-imposed exile on the Continent in 1900, at 46.
A great vehicle for Brian Bedford, who directs and plays Lady Bracknell at the same time.
Julius Caesar (preview) http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/plays/caesar.cfm
The closest to an unfolding political drama I have been given to see with Shakespeare. Enjoyed immensely. In prose – great lines (“Not that I loved Caesar less, but that I loved Rome more!” declares Brutus... and this great rejoinder by Marc-Anthony: “Yet Brutus says he (Caesar) was ambitious; And Brutus is an honourable man”, in a sarcastic refrain.) The historical lesson is that no matter how laudable the objective is (freedom), if the deed to achieve it is nefarious (murder), the outcome can only be counterproductive if not macabre (civil war; empire)! Tightly executed – that Ben Carlson has all the quality of a star performer.
Great set design, but again this irresistible and incorrigible urge to somehow “contemporanize” the setting, this time in an uncertain period – and perhaps that is the idea – where toga mix with Indian-sub-continent-looking outfits, guns with daggers, robotcop-like soldiers and plain “maquisard”-type fighters! Distracting and don’t see what it adds to what one could find in the right historical epoch setting!
Three Sisters (opening) http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/plays/threesisters.cfm
Dark Chekov, dark Russians! Nothing cheerful here. All done with the full dose of dreadfulness, despair and mental cruelty. Nostalgia for the good old days (in Moscow) that messes up the rest of everybody’s life spent in oblivion...
June 4, 2009 (20th anniversary of the Tian An Men massacre, while I am thinking about this...)
