In its 46th season, with an anticipated record attendance of about 525,000, the Stratford Festival of Canada resounds with the cheers of its customers and the jeers of its critics.
With an annual budget of about $19.5 million and a 12-play, 26-week season extending through Nov. 8, Stratford is the largest not-for-profit theater festival in North America; and for the last few years, under artistic director Richard Monette, it has been on a roll at the box office. At the end of this season, moreover, it will take two of its productions, Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” and Moliere’s “The Miser” (both directed by Monette) to New York for a rare, two-week run in November at City Center.
Yet, despite full houses and rousing ovations, Stratford and Monette have been the subject of severe criticism for “the excesses of success” (as one headline in a Toronto newspaper put it).
The popularity, critics argue, has come at a price. The festival is too big and too box-office driven, these critics believe. The acting company is aging, they add. Canadian playwrights are ignored; and the festival’s mandate to produce classic theater has been supplanted by a watered-down schedule of pop musicals and warmed-over Broadway fare, such as this season’s “Man of LaMancha” and “The Miracle Worker.”
The festival is accused of becoming a Disney World-like festival, existing on souvenir sales and soft entertainments; and, while it plows along unimaginatively, it is receiving increasing competition from other Canadian festivals.
Soulpepper, a new company whose members include several former Stratford players, this summer drew critics’ praise in a splashy Toronto debut of classic dramas directed by Robin Phillips, Stratford’s former artistic director. In addition, big, bustling Stratford is often unfavorably compared with the smaller Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, where critics find a better balance between art and commerce.
Some of the criticism may be blunted by next summer’s schedule, which is to be pared to 10 plays and will include two Canadian works. The establishment of a new conservatory for classical theater training also is intended to develop and strengthen the skills of young actors.
Meanwhile, in the here and now, the work goes on, mostly with audience approval.
“Man of LaMancha” may not seem like an inspired choice for the festival’s main stage; but under guidance by Broadway director Susan Schulman, it is about as good as this war-horse musical is ever going to be; and it is being ecstatically received by its full houses. Besides, as Monette is careful to point out, it is based on the classic “Don Quixote” by Miguel de Cervantes, who was Shakespeare’s contemporary. And, Monette adds, “How else are we to survive?” (unless crowd pleasers like “LaMancha” pull in the customers).
“The Miracle Worker,” William Gibson’s 1960 Tony Award-winning drama about the relationship between the blind and mute child Helen Keller and her teacher Annie Sullivan, has drawn similar heat as a tired, second-hand choice. But the workmanlike Stratford production nevertheless has a powerful emotional pull on its audiences — which includes many youngsters — and it never fails to draw a standing ovation at its finish.
(Both “LaMancha” and “Miracle Worker,” by the way, feature Kevin Gudahl, the Chicago actor who is spending his fifth season in Stratford, before readying himself to play Prince Hal in Chicago for Shakespeare Repertory’s “Henry IV.”)
Monette’s production of “Much Ado About Nothing” has received a delighted reception from its audiences in the Avon Theatre. Set in a leisured 1920s world, it features several Stratford stalwarts, including William Hutt and James Blendick, plus Martha Henry and Brian Bedford as a very mature pair of sparring lovers, Beatrice and Benedick.
Pretty to see and pleasant to hear in its musical interludes, the production is often very funny, especially in an uproarious drunk scene for Hutt; and Bedford, full of tricks, is a most ingratiating Benedick. Henry, on the other hand, remains a little too wan and drab when the time comes for her to sparkle.
The pairing of two veteran actors as autumnal lovers works surprisingly well here. (When they look at the love poems they have written each other, they must put on their reading glasses.) And the whole production looks lovely on the Avon stage. (Whether it will fare as well in the big City Center auditorium in New York remains to be seen.)
The festival’s third stage, the Tom Patterson Theatre, a converted handball court, is home to Tennessee Williams’ “The Night of the Iguana” and Anton Chekhov’s “The Cherry Orchard.”
“Orchard” finds Henry, backed by a sturdy supporting cast, on much friendlier ground as a fluttering, fading aristocrat about to lose her old, genteel world of privilege; and “Iguana” has as its centerpiece a fine performance by Seana McKenna as a frail, gentle and yet steely Hannah Jelkes, the wandering spinster who arrives with her 97-year-old grandfather (a sprightly William Needles) and crosses paths with the defrocked Rev. Shannon (Geordie Johnson) at a rundown Mexican resort.
Along with seven other productions of the season, from Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar,” “The Winter’s Tale” and “Two Gentlemen of Verona” to Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” these works show a Stratford Festival capable of producing competent to excellent stage work.
The festival may be stodgy in its repertory selections and some of its plays may be overly familiar and/or overproduced; but as “Much Ado” demonstrates, it can still turn out a satisfying and entertaining evening of classic theater.
