Stratford Ho!

Welcome to my mix of public thanks, travelogue, and short reviews. The joy of the Internet is, there’s still time to click “back” on your browsers. Going… going… gone.

So, first: THANK YOU to all who joined us for our awesome Stratford adventure, but particularly to our generous drivers, Juliana and Dave, and to my Ottawa Branch co-organizing sister, Debra. Hope you all had as much fun as I did. For those in the Toronto or Ottawa areas who think the sort of thing I’m about to describe sounds like fun, stay tuned for next summer, when I hope to organize something similar on a larger scale, involving bookings of group tickets in January and perhaps even the rental of a school bus.

Our adventure begins on the Saturday morning when the Car o’Joy set out from the TTC station with maturity levels directly related to proximity to the trunk:

(in the front)
DRIVER: Hmmm, that’s an interesting question. What time period other than my own would I be most interested in living in?
SHOTGUN PASSENGER: I know, there are so many factors to consider…
(in the back)
THE BACKSEAT: Oh I just can’t WAIT to be king! LA LA LA LA LA!

Luckily for them, the front-of-car survived this with their sanity intact and luckily for us, also without marooning the backseat by the side of the road. After much singing and a preliminary round of Botticelli*, we arrived at the SGH Residence.

Short review #1: SGH Residence
Clocking in at about $40/night/person for a double dorm room, with public toilets and showers, access to an outdoor pool, a free hospital cafeteria breakfast, and parking included, it wasn’t the cheapest place to stay, but it wasn’t the worst, either. The lack of air conditioning and hard beds made it difficult to get to sleep, although, to be fair, by that point, I had also acquired a painful sore throat and slight fever which may have been the real culprits. The staff were friendly and accommodating — kindly allowing us to change our reservation several times right up to the day before we arrived — but the breakfast, although generous, was pretty much standard hospital food. We had fun watching TV and playing games in the lounge, though. All in all, I wouldn’t be averse to staying there again, but I’ll do some more price-checking in preparation for next year.

From there, we headed out to meet the Second Car at our accidentally designated lunch spot. (“Accidentally”, because I said I was going to pick up my lunch there, and it turned out that we all ended up meeting there to eat because of this.)

Short review #2: York Street Kitchen
According to my Stratford guide, this was voted one of the top 40 places to get your money’s worth of food in Canada. They make gourmet sandwiches of various sorts, and one always has the option of building one’s own. My friends and I “discovered” this place on one of our high school field trips to Stratford, had a devil of a time figuring out where exactly it was on subsequent trips, and thoroughly enjoyed picking up a sandwich at their window opening onto the park-ish area on the bank of the Avon river. Their bread is fresh, they have tons of local toppings (I always pick their Othello goat cheese sandwich), and it’s fun to order by ticking off little boxes on their checklist form.

Liz thoughtfully brought a picnic blanket, which made our lunch by the river even more fun, and we serendipitously managed to be there at the same time that Swamperella, a Cajun music band, was playing on the river barge for Stratford’s free Summer Music Festival. Because it had been YK’s birthday earlier that week, Juliana and I had made robot cupcakes, which Juliana cleverly insulated and smuggled in via a Scene It Box and a carry-on sized suitcase in her trunk. They were so well disguised that even when Dave put the (signficantly heavier) box of cupcakes in YK’s hands, he didn’t suspect until Juliana pulled off the lid and we all sang “Happy Birthday”.

Although at this point there was some talk of renting a canoe or paddle-boat, in the end we settled for wandering around Stratford. The Family and Company toy store doesn’t get its own short review, but go there anyway if you ever make it to Stratford: they have a wide selection, including things from ThinkGeek’s catalogue that I’ve never seen offline. Unlike most toy stores, they have staff wandering around who are generally happy to demonstrate and to let you try out most of their strangest toys, and occasionally, they’ll pump crazy songs through the store speakers and give candy to anyone they catch dancing. Less exciting but still fun stores we visited included one that sold loose-leaf tea; another that sold occult and Wiccan magic supplies; a mix-your-own frozen yogurt place that didn’t really clean its machine, as we discovered when each of us had bits of the others’ flavours in our own cones; and an environmentally friendly store that sold various organic and recycled products.

The Ottawa car finally arrived in time for dinner, which we generally had at two places. (Yes, I had it at both. No need to judge!)

Short review #3: The County Food Co.
Eating here involved approximately a minute and a half of singing “A Little Priest” from Sweeney Todd. I can’t comment on anything but their hot meat pies, which were delicious and came in four varieties, none of which was “murdered victims of a crazy barber”. The prices were reasonably cheap, and most of the ingredients in their wide selection of cold salads, sandwiches, and hot dishes appear to come from local farm suppliers. We had a little trouble finding a table big enough for all twelve of us, but we staked out a couple of the picnic benches outside and hunkered down.

Short review #4: Boomer’s Gourmet Fries
I wasn’t exactly hungry when I ordered from here, but when I was looking for a place for us to meet up with the Ottawa car, I kept running into reviews praising this place’s poutine, particularly their unique goat-cheese variety. So even though the bison meat pie from The County Food Co. pretty much filled me up, I just had to go try it. Goat cheese, perfect fries, pesto, and a very light beef gravy — delicious. They do burgers, too, but I didn’t get a chance to try those. Also, no real seating: I brought my order back to the bench beside the restaurant where the others were eating. On the plus side, they did let me take approximately a handful each of towellettes and plastic forks…

After dinner, it was time to split up: a few of us were seeing King of Thieves at the Studio theatre, and the rest of us neatly divided ourselves between Evita and The Tempest at the Avon and Festival, respectively. Three of us decided to walk off our various culinary indulgences and take the path by the river to the Festival. This involved some photographing of swans and climbing a nearly horizontal tree while singing the Pride Rock theme, but eventually we did get there and meet the other two who were seeing the same play.

Short review #5: The Tempest
I admit that part of the reason I was disappointed with this play is the fact that I already have complicated pre-conceptions about it. In high school, my friend Tory and I co-directed a production for our wonderful 100%-student-run Shakespeare company, and although I’ve seen several professional productions since, I’ve never found an Ariel or Miranda or Neapolitan court I liked better, nor interpretations of the action that supplanted ours in my imagination. The Tempest is a tough script, a knotty problem of a play, and I guess I’m still searching for the show that will solve it in my heart. I had high hopes for Christopher Plummer, since he made even King Lear come alive for me, but Prospero is such a difficult character. The magical effects were intriguing; Dion Johnstone as Caliban was energetic and brilliant, the first version I’ve seen that made me believe Prospero really did beat him for his transgressions; and the music, from Full fathom five… to Flout ’em and scout ’em, was gorgeous and moving. But somehow, I didn’t “catch”… you know when you’re trying to start a campfire, and you carefully stuff in your newspaper and kindling, but no matter how many matches you hold under them, even if there’s nothing wrong with the matches or with the paper, they just sort of smoke and snuff out? Like that.

I suppose I should mention at this point that The Tempest made me literally sick, although this certainly had to do with the level of air conditioning in the auditorium and not with any of the play’s content. By intermission, half my throat felt swollen and full of needles. By the time we all met up to say good-bye to the car of Definitely NOT Joy Because Joy Would Totally Have Stayed Overnight, Just Sayin’, all I wanted to do was go to sleep.

Which I did. The next morning, we had our lukewarm hospital breakfasts (mmm… hard, cold home fries. Like eating dice made out of potatoes), and then sat around watching TV and playing Celebrities, for which Juliana had thoughtfully brought pre-cut paper slips**.

After this, we did some more downtown shopping, having particular interest in Rheo Thompson Candies Ltd. and the science toy store Quark Soup. We decided on Fellini’s for lunch, which means…

Short review #6: Fellini’s
At $10-15 per meal, this was definitely the most expensive restaurant at which we ate. The food was nice — I shared a chicken pizza and had blue-cheese-and-turnip soup. More importantly, the tables were covered in brown paper, and we got actual crayons of various colours, even brown, black, and peach — not those faint-hearted stiff ones that arrive at family-friendly chain restaurants and barely even make a mark no matter how hard you press. Also, we were never waiting long for a water refill or a fresh bread basket. Most importantly, when the staff learned it was Peter’s birthday, they brought him a dessert with a candle in it. So although my wallet and I prefer the simpler, cheaper food of picnic time, this was a great choice for our only sit-down, full-service meal in Stratford.

Since matinees are start at 2pm, right after lunch, hard on the heels of Fellini’s comes the seventh and final short review.

Short review #7: Peter Pan
I was really looking forward to Peter Pan, the original J. M. Barrie play (not the musical), and it had some aspects I really liked: the crocodile was the scariest beast I’ve ever seen onstage; the Never-T-rex was an excellent and appropriate substitute for the ostrich and kangaroo; by turning the “Indians” into “Amazons”, the production team found the neatest solution I’ve seen so far to different mores of different eras; and speaking entirely from my experiences trying to replicate the same last fall, the fake “gaslight” of the nursery was amazing.

There was nothing in the show I thought was bad — I enjoyed seeing the audience interaction, the use of adult actors for all roles, and the experiment where J. M. Barrie was as much a character in the play as Peter and the Darlings. I was also intrigued to see onstage for the first time the ending that dwells on the family life and love Peter loses by refusing to grow up, as opposed to every other production I’ve seen that ended on a note of nostalgia for childhood. So I don’t really have a specific reason I can say this show didn’t move me the way I expected it to, but there it is: something was just missing for me, maybe because of the sense of fragmentedness and conscious artistry that overwhelmed the whimsy.

However, all of us agreed that our favourite part of the play was watching the audience, which was happily packed with small children. The boy in front of me was clearly a kindred spirit in that he was a Hook fan, cheering, “Go Hook! Go Hook!” as Peter and Hook duelled in the play’s climactic scene; my sister had a similar seatmate who shouted, “Go Peter! Go Peter!” And everyone’s favourite moment of the play came during the tense scene at the end in which Peter secretly closes the nursery shutters so that the children will think Mrs. Darling has forgotten about them. As Peter struggled with his inner demons, a shrill, preschool voice shrieked, “Open the window!!!”

So Peter did.

Unfortunately, here’s where our journey ended, since right after the curtain call we all piled back into our cars and headed Toronto- and Ottawa-bound. Thanks again to all who made this possible, and looking forward to seeing many more (of you?) same time next year! (Everyone’s up for Titus Andronicus, right? (But probably not for more meat pies on the same day, huh…))

Appendices (game rules):

* Botticelli is a more exciting verison of Twenty Questions to which Juliana introduced me a couple years ago. In the interest of more people playing it on long car rides, here are the rules:
1. Choose someone to be IT. IT secretly picks a famous person, who can be real or fictional, living or dead, etc. This secret person will hereafter be referred to as the Target.
2. IT tells the rest of the players the letter with which the Target’s name begins, specifying if applicable whether it’s the beginning of the Target’s first name or surname.

(For instance, if IT chose Elvis Presley, he or she might say, “The letter is E. First name” or “The letter is P. Last name.” Generally, IT should choose the Target’s last name unless the Target is commonly referred to by his or her first name. For instance, it would be unfair to give “The letter is W. Last name.” for Prince Charles, because most people refer to him by his given name.)

3.  The other players have the goal of guessing IT’s target. They do so by taking turns posing trivia questions IT. The answer to each question must begin with the first letter of the Target’s name, the letter IT just revealed.

(For instance, if the letter of the Target’s name was “T”, one might ask IT, “What element has the symbol W?” (Ans. Tungsten), “Who is falsely accused of rape in To Kill a Mockingbird?” (Ans. Tom Robinson), or “Who was a Canadian father of Confederation?” (Ans. Charles Tupper).)

4. If the answer to the trivia question is the Target, then the players have guessed who it is and so win the game.

5. Otherwise, if IT can answer the trivia question with a reasonable response that begins with the correct letter (for instance, the player who asked, “Who was a Canadian father of Confederation?” might be thinking of Charles Tupper, but IT could safely answer “Thomas D’Arcy McGee”), the other players must think of another trivia question to pose.

6. If IT cannot answer the trivia question, AND none of the other players (i.e. the ones who didn’t ask IT the question) can answer the trivia question, the other players must think of another trivia question to pose.

7. If IT cannot answer the trivia question, AND at least one of the other players can, the other players may ask IT one yes-or-no question about the Target.

** Well, I gave you the rules to Botticelli, didn’t I? Enjoy Celebrities too:

1. Everyone gets 10 slips of paper. On each of their papers, players write the name of someone everyone in the group could reasonably be expected to know, viz. a celebrity, a historical figure, a fictional character, or a mutual acquaintance. Famous group names are allowed, too: for instance, you can write the name of a band.

2. Everyone passes their ten names to the person on their left. Everyone discards exactly two of the names they currently hold. Generally, one chooses to discard the most difficult or most obscure names one has. The surviving sets of 8 slips are put into a hat, box, etc. where they are mixed around.

3. Everyone splits into teams of 2 or 3, depending on whether there’s an even or odd number of players.

4. For each round, teams select a player who will try to get the rest of the team to say the names on the slips he or she draws out of the hat one by one. Each team gets a certain amount of time (recommended: between 1:30-2 minutes) per round, and when one team completes its time, the next team gets its turn. The methods by which the player is allowed to communicate differ in each round, as do the point values of successful guesses. Any slip a player has drawn (whether guessed or not) is kept by his or her team unless one of the next teams runs out of slips in the hat. If this happens, first, all the un-guessed kept slips go back in the hat. If these run out, all the guessed slips go back in, too. When all teams are finished the round, all the slips go back in the hat.

5. ROUND ONE: the player may say or do anything short of actually saying the words on the slip (or any variations thereof — for instance, if the slip says “Bill”, the player can’t say “William” or “Billy”), spelling out the name in letters (the player may, however, go with, “has the same first initial as the word ‘bread’… second letter is the letter that starts ‘indigo’… etc.), or using a “rhymes with” clue (e.g. “Okay, it rhymes with… Pill Blinton”). Players may NOT pass on any slips this round — each drawn slip must be guessed before the team can move on and draw another. Correctly guessed slips are worth 1 point each.

6. INTERMISSION: One player from any team goes through all the slips, guessed and unguessed, and reads them aloud once. All the slips go back in the hat.

7. ROUND TWO: The player may say only one word. Gestures and melodies are still allowed. However, the team has only one guess. Incorrectly guessed slips must be discarded. Players may pass on slips in this round. Correctly guessed slips are worth 2 points each.

8. ROUND THREE: The player may use only gestures and melodies. The team still has only one guess, and the player may still pass. Correctly guessed slips are worth 3 points each.

9. The team with the most cumulative points after round three wins.