Last opening series at Stratford Shakespeare Festival – 5 altogether
The Trespassers, written and directed by prolific Canadian playwright Morris Panych. Family drama in the orchards of the Okanagan valley! Original work, world première at the Festival. Dying left-leaning grandpa, teaching life lessons (poker and sex!) to his bi-polar grandson, against the wish of single, frustrated mother, with the help of clichéd sympathetic whore. Harsh theme, well-structured drama, streamlined set...Part of the modern theatre experience...
Midsummer Night’s Dream. A great reminder of Shakespeare’s extraordinarily diverse talent! Macbeth, Hamlet, Titus Andronicus, Coriolanus, yes, all great tragedies. But then this allegory of love, such a romantic piece in fairyland, where magic in the end sets every love right – what a delight! This is a great production by British director David Grindley at his debut at Stratford. Tom Rooney, as Puck, Oberon’s jester, and Geraint Wyn Davies, as turned-into-an-ass Bottom, steal the show! The set, with its hydraulically manipulated collapsing platform, is also quite fitting for the dancing and jumping punkish fairies, clad in tight leather and chains! (The clothing transposition did not bother me that much in this case, at least for the fairies – the 1950’s outfits of the rest of the cast is another story...)
Don’t think that any production of Dream could ever compare for me to the first one I saw (and the first Shakespeare play I recall seeing), Peter Brook’s production of the play with the Royal Shakespeare Company. I saw it in 1971 at the Aldwych Theatre in London’s West End – a young man then on summer holiday discovering the world! So acrobatic, so light, almost “diaphane”! I read somewhere that Brook’s Dream stands as one of the most influential theatrical productions of the 20th century! I would have loved to see Robert Lepage’s rendering of Dream, which he put together in 1992 with the Royal National Theatre in London, the first North-American to direct a Shakespeare play at the RNT, I seem to recall the headlines then.
Rice Boy, a play by Indian-Canadian playwright Sunil Kuruvilla (he lives in Waterloo), directed by Guillermo Verdecchia, a Canadian director and writer who is at his first in Stratford but has written and directed many other plays elsewhere in Canada. A mix of nostalgia of not so good a life in India (Kerala) by a father and son immigrants to Canada; the father can’t adjust – he yearns for a return; the son did not want to leave and now certainly does not want to go back. It’s about men who have lost their women, physically (grandpa and father) or otherwise (uncle); it’s about women who can’t find happiness in their current state (auntie who has lost hope; servant girl who will eventually too) or fleeing their unpromising future (crippled cousin Tina who escapes marriage to an ugly man). You get the picture; not a happy one! A glimpse at domestic miseries, life with its family drama not very different than those elsewhere than India but played out in a very Indian style reflecting their own cultural antecedents. Cynthia found a woman drying up her tears in the W.C., clearly very affected by the outcome. We walked out of there pretty dry-eyed...
P.S. got an additional perspective hearing Kuruvilla at one of the sessions the Festival puts up for members of the Playwright Circle Sunday morning, this one about play development. The Festival has now made it its mission to promote and feature at least 3 Canadian playwrights as part of its annual playlist. This year, it is The Trespassers, Rice Boy and Zastrozzi. We learned how much the process of creation is an on-going one, where the play itself evolves from production to production, a novelty for me, although we gathered that this was also going on in Shakespeare’s time, where multitude versions of some of the better-known plays exist. Rice Boy has been considerably modified for this production, with the contribution of actors as well as the “dramaturge” and the artistic director. Recomforting to hear the playwright to say at the end that he came back to the original ideas that inspired him!
Phèdre de Jean Racine, directed here by San Francisco American Conservatory Theatre (ACT) artistic director Carey Perloff, using a translation cum adaptation by contemporary playwright Timberlake Wertenbaker. Extraordinary Phaedra by veteran Stratford actor Seana McKenna; the moment she walks in, you sense the inescapable and fatal drama that haunts this doomed woman. And McKenna sustains this throughout the tormented and painful path to the bitter end. Hippolytus, Theseus, Oenone are all excellent but she dominates (as it should). It called for comparison with the rendering by the Royal National Theatre we just saw last June broadcasted live (well, almost - 6 hour deferment) from London at a Cineplex: wonderful but I prefer McKenna’s Phaedra to that of Helen Mirren’s (http://www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/phedre). This is a performance I will remember.
Of course I hated the clothing transposition from antic Greece, where it belongs, to some 17th century fashion, burdening Phaedra and Theseus in heavy clothing unnecessarily. Serves absolutely no purpose in this case and only creates a distraction. A disappointment at the very first scene when Hippolytus comes in dressed like a “mousquetaire” without all his regalia – was that intended as a tribute to Racine!?! Who knows – I wish I could have met the director at the reception afterwards to ask her – but I will get over it!
Zastrozzi. A play from the 70’s by Canadian George F. Walker. This is apparently a seminal work. Walker wrote many other plays since. Iconoclast, allegoric! Weird for sure at the time. Have to be seen in its context – a wanted break from tradition even from what nationalistic inspiration that motivated alternative theatre at the time – but has not aged that badly. Enjoyed in the moment. Again part of the Canadian theatre discovery experience...
Stratford, August 23, 2009
