Every Which Way But Stratford

But first, a bit of business: if you are reading this on Facebook, be aware that my Facebook posts are actually imported from the RSS feed of my blog at my website and since Facebook seems to be doing a rather bad job at it, you may find it better to check out my posts there (where they are updated every Sunday) or through said RSS feed.

Anyway: woohoo Stratford! Thanks to everyone, Juliana, YK, Angela, Pat, Emily, Anita, Liz, ML, and Sheila, for making this weekend a complete blast! Thank you especially to Juliana and Emily for driving! And I guess thank you, Stratford Festival, for having Play On weekends where people under 30 can buy $25 tickets for every show!

Here are my “reviews” of some things we did!

buying strawberries from a roadside stand

Ever since I saw them at the Farmer’s Market here in Toronto, my heart has been set on buying a 7-quart flat of strawberries. Last weekend, we lived the dream.

Awesome idea, Emily.

seeing Camelot (Festival Theatre)

One of the best moments of this show was at the very beginning, when (spoiler!) a real hawk swooped down from the balcony onto Merlin’s wrist. At the performance we attended, something went wrong with the tech a few moments later, and the theatre announced that they’d be restarting the show. But twenty minutes after that, they came back online to thank us for our patience and announce that the show would be restarting from the exact point it left off. The audience let out a collective “Awwwww!” — we’d wanted to see the hawk again.

I’d only ever heard the original cast recording of this musical, and from that I’d got the idea that it was sentimental and serious. I was surprised to find it very funny; in retrospect, being familiar with the book upon which it’s based (T. H. White’s The Once and Future King), I should’ve expected how sly and silly it would be. Geraint Wyn Davies as Arthur succeeded in charming the audience; just looking at the other credits Jonathan Winsby lists in the programme (Enjolras, Gaston) will tell you how well he pulls off Lancelot as a manly heroic douche. Kaylee Harwood was excellent as Guenevere, particularly since, despite a couple sparkling songs, the character isn’t very strongly written.

having a Victorian potluck picnic at our hostel

(If you are surprised at the word “Victorian,” I suggest you consider that my academic working life at the moment consists of reading the mid-19th-century-London equivalent of fanboy arguments and EW articles all day.)

Mmm… thanks to everyone for making this delicious. As well as the aforementioned seven quarts of strawberries, we had refreshing lemonade, satisfying cold fowl, a very flat shooter’s sandwich, oh-god-I-shouldn’t-eat-another-serving-but-it-tastes-so-good berry trifle, and holy-crap-I-need-this-recipe lavender-and-rosewater cookies. Also, cheezies.

shopping at Distinctly Tea and Family & Co.

Rest assured that we descended on the looseleaf tea store like a pack of tea-drinking wolves. That is because looseleaf tea is awesome, and if you don’t think so then, unfortunately, you’re wrong. Distinctly Tea is great because you can buy little packets of any of their teas for a couple bucks, which means you can try them without committing to the huge expensive bags you usually have to get at other stores.

Family & Co. is also great, and they have tons of toys, but I can’t talk about what I bought because it was birthday presents for a certain sister who occasionally reads this blog. They did have a giant ring-shaped Frisbee that you’re supposed to catch with your body, though, which I thought would be great fun at a pool or the cottage but sadly was unable to afford at that moment.

watching The Merry Wives of Windsor (Festival Theatre)

Hands down the best production I saw this year at the Stratford Festival. It’s confusing and talky Shakespeare, yes, but the five leads (Geraint Wyn Davies as Falstaff, Tom McCamus as Page — and especially Laura Condlin and Lucy Peacock as the two titular merry wives and Tom Rooney as the jealous husband Ford) are all strong, with impeccable comic timing.

I was particularly impressed with their performances because to my ear, the dialogue sounded weaker than some of Shakespeare’s better known works. A Midsummer Night’s Dream practically takes actors by the hand, with timing built-in; in Merry Wives, it could’ve been possible to deliver all the lines in a way that seemed true to the spirit of the scene while still being devastatingly dull and unfunny. It’s like Shakespeare trusts his performers more in Merry Wives and gives them space to assert themselves.

watching Richard III (Tom Patterson Theatre)

The programme helpfully included a detailed geneaology of the royals who appear in this play, with important names bolded, and I know many of the audience found it necessary to follow the story, which is complicated and deals with archaic politics. However, I daresay contemporary audiences see Richard III not for its story but for the character of Richard himself. Here, I found myself slightly disappointed.

See, actress Seana McKenna stars as our eponymous hunchback, and when I saw the promo image of her sitting on a throne and smirking, I was super-excited to see a superb female performer tackle the part. But despite really, really wanting to like this show, I found myself disappointed both in her conception of the character and in the way the production used — or rather, didn’t use — the new dimension opened up by the fact of her gender. Instead, it seemed to paint everything in broad, declamatory brushstrokes: evil people are sneering toads, everyone in the final battle is colour-coded for moral convenience, every scene is played at face value, nothing new.

renting a boat on the Avon

Another dream of mine since last year, but since John Lennon was correct (i.e., they say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one), we made it happen! YK and Juliana rented a paddle boat, and I went canoeing with Angela and Pat. Somehow, I got a bright red sunburn just on one little patch on my right knee.

Also, since I evaluate my life by the extent to which it bears resemblance to wacky sitcomes, the best part was when Angela made hissing noises at a group of swans, which is how you say “F*** you!” in Waterfowlish. Luckily Pat had bought some swan food, so as they approached the boat, I threw handfuls to distract them. We got the hell out of Dodge just as the corn ran out.

watching The Grapes of Wrath (Avon Theatre)

Two words: surprise boobies.

Possibly less surprising if you know the story (which I didn’t), but still surprising to see them revealed onstage. The play suffered a bit from being an adaptation of a novel, although it tried to smooth over its awkward transitions with music and narration. The performers were good and all captured their characters well, with the slight caveat that many of them weren’t quite able to handle the southern U. S. accent clearly written into the script, with a weird-sounding result. The audience around us seemed to find the river onstage to be pretty cool, but I guess I was spoiled by having seen a production of Mary Zimmerman’s Metamorphoses, which prominently features something similar.

Also, despite the surprise boobies, I found the ending somewhat unsatisfying (it’s the first time I’ve ever actually been surprised that a show was over), but, hey, that one can be blamed on Steinbeck.

EPILOGUE: making pie

Even we couldn’t eat that entire seven quarts of strawberries. So I made pie with what was left when we got home. Angela, Sheila, Liz, and I all had some at various points. Yes, those are kangaroos. It’s the only cookie-cutter I have.

Kangaroos love strawberries. Little-known fact.

So that was our weekend! If you are still reading this and thinking, “Hey! This sounds awesome! Where do I sign up to join you next year?” the answer is, you just, uh, comment and say so. And then get invited to the Facebook event in January, because that’s when Stratford announces its Play On weekends for the coming season. And then decide from there if you want to come, and whether you’d rather do your own thing or join us for Victorian picnics and boat rentals. Hooray!