The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Stratford Theaters In Three Nations It was seven years ago that I visited the very English Stratford-on-Avon. Though I have not a drop of English blood in my...
...The onlookers have a far greater feeling of unity with the players than is possible in the old-fashioned theater...
...But, after having seen The Merchant of Venice with Katherine Hepburn and Morris Carnovsky, I am proud of my countrymen and feel certain that this Stratford project is destined to play an important part in American artistic development...
...As we passed a town famous for its gardens, our train was boarded by a troop of gay and pretty girls led by musicians and bearing baskets of roses...
...So, when I went to see a performance at the famous Shakespeare Theater, it seemed like a homecoming...
...Visitors from the ends of the earth chatted good-naturedly as if thev were old friends and neighbors...
...It was there that William Shakespeare spent his lusty youth, there that he poached upon the game preserves of Sir Thomas Lucy, from there that he fled to London when the old home town became too hot for him...
...Between the acts we strolled out on the wide outdoor balcony of the theater, and there below us on the sundrenched greensward the old-time English dances were being performed by the gaily costumed members of the British Folkdance Society...
...The Canadian Stratford has one advantage over its English prototype...
...The Housa-tonic is quite as romantic as either Avon...
...The half-timbered houses, the little, crooked streets, the calm Avon with the cwans floating in impressive dignity—it seemed I had known them all my life...
...The play that afternoon was Julius Caesar and the performance was first-class...
...And it was this same colorful market-town which was proud to receive the famous playwright and actor when, with money carefully hoarded in the capital, he prepared to purchase one of the largest and most respectable houses in the place...
...As in England and Canada, I enjoyed the hearty laughs at the old jokes...
...As we strolled along the lovely Canadian Avon and viewed the dignified and graceful Canadian swans, it seemed as if Shakespeare were pulling two far-separated parts of the world into a deeply significant unity...
...This was the annual celebration of the gay dancers, but I shall never be able to shake out of my head the notion that they are forever whirling and curtseying on that Stratford green...
...The only thing lacking in the American Stratford is the beauty of the gliding swans...
...My second Stratford I discovered last summer visiting some friends in Toronto, Ontario...
...It was all friendly, homelike, festive in a way which reminded me strongly of the original Stratford...
...But the play—good as it was—is not what comes back to me most vividly...
...Without any governmental assistance...
...The cast contained some of the most distinguished British actors...
...So on a certain Tues-dav afternoon we found ourselves on an excursion train along with some 500 others bound for a performance of Hamlet...
...Soon the fact that we were all bedecked with flowers added to the neighborly gaiety...
...The direction and the acting were superb...
...It was all so gay, so lively, so hearty that it seemed as if we were looking straight into Shakespeare's century...
...And the production of the play we saw was really brilliant...
...Countless passages in the plays suggest that, during the stirring London days, his small-town experiences were constantly in the mind of the big-town showman...
...As in England, the play-seemed fresh and new and the audience appreciated it all...
...I must confess, therefore, that it was with a good deal of doubt and trepidation that I rolled along the Merritt Parkway recently toward Stratford, Connecticut...
...The new features of the stage were utilized to the utmost...
...the leaders of this venture have succeeded in building a magnificent theater...
...I found the town buzzing with talk of Stratford-on-Avon in Canada, just a hundred miles from Toronto...
...The audience rose to the points of emotional tension and laughed at the jokes as though it were all being heard for the first time...
...The performance of Hamlet was excellent and the performers made full use of the freedom afforded by their flexible modern equipment...
...Though I have not a drop of English blood in my veins, it seemed like a real homecoming...
...The Canadian structure, which was occupied for the first time last season, is modern in the best sense of the word...
...It is not quite as modern as the Canadian, but it has broken away from most of the conventional features of this branch of architecture...
...The stage allows full freedom for the director and the actors and perfect viewing and hearing for the audience...
...At Stratford we were all loaded into buses and whirled away to dining-rooms where dinner was quickly served and cheerfully put away...
...The English theater, built in 1932, follows in the main the conventional 19th-century lines of architecture...
...The great theater set in its green English lawns drew drama-lovers from all over the world—from the Continent of Europe, from all the Commonwealth countries, from the I nited States, from Asia and Africa...
Vol. 40 • October 1957 • No. 40
