The Stratford Success Story

...And Langham has directed a full-throated, robust production, swarming with crowd scenes, saturated with Miss Moiseiwitsch's (and Desmond Heeley's) autumnal colors, and breathing romantic theatricality at every nostril...

...Everything about the Festival is theatrical: its green-decked setting alongside a gently meandering river decorated with swans...

...Even all of Plummer's talent and skill fail to make us believe or care about so diluted a monarch...

...No halfmeasures or makeshifts here...

...Interestingly, too, by doing the best possible productions the Festival has succeeded in drawing consistently large audiencesthis season's expected attendance going to something like over 93 per cent of capacity...

...The play moves beyond pastiche and into poetry...

...But the hand-to-hand combat at the end between Macbeth and MacDuff (Gerusi) is literally breathtaking...

...More power to him and to the Festival which brought him forth...

...And the notices, except for Cyrano, were not that favorable...

...As Cyrano, Plummer is magnificent...

...But it is, always and inevitably, Plummer's evening...

...The stars this year are Canada's own Christopher Plummer and Kate Reid, ably supported by a solidly balanced acting company strong in both Festival veterans and newcomers...

...Here, credit youthful director George McCowan at least with a conception that makes the characters specific and human...

...Ariel (with Bruno Gerussi constantly recalling the late Julie Garfield) has a real need to be free, as well as a sense of humor...

...Nor are the actors scornful of wigs, beards, swordplay or larger-thanlife performances...

...Unfortunately for Stratford, whose stage she also helped to design, she is leaving to join Guthrie's new venture in Minneapolis...

...Shrew had been staged once before, in 1954, by Guthrie...

...it represents the Festival's first repeat...

...The production of Macbeth tries even more for the human touch, but with its British director, Peter Coe, too obviously aiming at a mixture of realistic psychology and Brechtian stagecraft...

...His performance is as exciting an event in the theater as anything seen since the night shortly after the War when Olivier doubled in Oedipus and The Critic for the Old Vic...

...The lyrical schmaltz is still present, made marvelously effective because some of the worst of it has been skimmed off...

...The actors, including the stars, serve the play and not merely their own egos...

...Of the three Shakespearean productions, The Taming of the Shrew is clearly the most successful...

...No compromises with irrelevancies...

...its beautiful wood-textured auditorium wrapping its more than 2,000 spectators round and close to one of the most flexible and dynamic apron stages in existence...

...its handsome flag-topped, circular, wood-andcement building standing on a hilltop at the water's edge...

...Plummer's portrayal is not merely admirable...

...As for the performances, what impresses a visiting American fireman after several outings over the years is-beyond the question of each individual production's faults or virtues-the special level of excellence, the degree of discipline both on stage and off, the sense of everything being first-rate...

...He is also aided by the skill and verve of his principal players, especially Kate Reid as a charmingly feminine and understandable Katharina...

...He skillfully blends the Christopher Sly episodes into the convention of a strolling band of vagabonds performing the Katharina-Petruchio story for Sly's benefit-and their own...

...Nevertheless, the results achieved this season seemed to me the most satisfying since my visit in 1953 to the Festival's opening night (when Alec Guiness and Irene Worth, under the direction of Sir Tyrone Guthrie, starred in Richard III and All's Well That Ends Well in Stratford's original tent-theater...

...And Caliban, unforgettably and touchingly played by Colicos in head-to-toe makeup, is no inhuman creature but the raw embodiment of man's savage nature...

...Through Cyrano's most complex maneuvers, he moves with gentility and ease, always giving the impression of holding back reserves of energy or nuance...

...The physical production, for example (scenic pieces, costumes, properties), is always on the highest possible level of artistry...

...As this saddest of buffoons, his physical grace and vocal prowess have never been put to better use...

...Then there is the event itself: the presence in a small Ontario railroad town (20,000) of a theater and a theatrical occasion now heard around the world...

...Prospero (William Hutt, one of Canada's most versatile performers) is not so much an unworldly magical-fantastic figure as a sensitive and passionately troubled humanist striving to reconcile himself to the world's evil...

...The response to his work has been overwhelming: not a seat empty, rave notices, standing ovations and enthusiasm unparalleled in the 10-year history of the Festival...

...Celebrating its tenth season, with its famed open stage somewhat refashioned and its repertory extended from the usual three productions to four-a delightful Taming of the Shrew, a reserved Tempest, an unconventional Macbeth, and a lavishly spectacular Cyrano de Bergerac - Canada's Stratford Festival served more than ever this summer to give evidence that it has no artistic peer on the North American continent...

...He is horrible and human...

...nothing is spared to achieve the results required, taste rather than expense being arbiter...

...And Plummer is worth observing, even in his choice of a weakling Macbeth, in every gesture and inflection...

...and, surprisingly so because one had expected it to be Plummer's plum, John Colicos as a wittily energetic Petruchio...

...Yet his sensitivity is like quicksilver, darting back and forth between facets which bring forth laughter or the strongest pathos...

...Nor is there enough of a relationship established, beyond the obvious Oedipal pull, between him and his Lady Macbeth (Miss Reid...

...And the audience comes not just to a show or to worship at the feet of stars (though they have their favorites), but because simply being there and experiencing the occasion tends to be immediately and richly rewarding...

...Throughout, Langham is strongly aided by the splendid visual imagination and taste of his long-time associate, costume designer Tanya Moiseiwitsch...

...The play's the thing wherein to catch the conscience of the Stratford Festival...

...It succeeds only in becoming heavy and unreal, and is generally ill-adapted to the Festival's platform stage...

...Season by season, they manage to make the whole greater than the sum of its partsthe true mark of an acting company...

...This is not to mention the cannon-shot which precedes each performance, and in the spacious, swirling lobby, the sudden brassband fanfare heralding the start of the action at the beginning and at each intermission...

...Would that we had 10 such...

...The Tempest, more difficult to integrate, is less unified but never uninteresting...

...For sheer theatrical funand-games, their first scene together is a delight-as is the entire performance...

...All the pleasure and zest which the theater is capable of is contained in this production, and there is talk of bringing it back next year...

...Director Langham has adapted Brian Hooker's English version of the old Rostand warhorse with a literate intelligence and an acute ear, but without stooping to popularize or modernize...

...In fact, one of the strengths of the Festival is its ability to convince leading actors to play some of the smaller roles...

...Langham succeeds in giving the entire production unity and style, and in bringing such freshness to the farce that it often passes for high comedy...

...It is a remarkable performance by a young actor whose talent seems to have no limits beyond his own endurance, and whose greatest opportunity to grow and develop has come from this same Festival of which he is now the crowning achievement...

...The gallant mocking Gascon hero becomes a tragic figure whose flaws come only from a love of beauty and a rigid code of conduct...

...Indeed, it is difficult to find its equal anywhere in today's English-speaking theater...

...The cast, including the attractive Toby Robins as a sympathetic Roxanne, Peter Donat as an earnest Christian, and Colicos as an unswerving De Guiche, plays convincingly in high bravura style...

...Directed by Michael Langham, Guthrie's successor as Artistic Director of the Festival, this Shrew is colorfully rambunctious, spirited and inventive-without indulging in gags for gags' sake...