[3.5 minute read]
Where the magic happens. (Sometimes!)
From The Stratford Festival website.
ShowGirl and I got away to a little town in southwestern Ontario. It’s called Stratford, after The Bard Himself’s wee agricultural hub in England. Our Stratford also straddles an Avon River, but the place had been only a quiet nod to the old country before a group of, I would have to say, pretty wacky locals decided that with a name like that, their country town really should be THE North American Shakespearean Experience! Yeah! What a silly idea. And of course, now, the Stratford Festival actually is this magnificent thing. Dreams and dreamers.
My bride and I didn’t select A Midsummer Night’s Dream among the plays we would see this time. (We only fit in one Shakespeare blast, The Tempest. I dream of Dream-ing later in the season, but Stratford’s a fair hike from Ottawa.) But among the offerings was the American classic musical Guys and Dolls, one of the productions she sang/danced/supporting actor-ed in during her stint in the Company lo those many years ago, so that choice was obvious. My top priority was Waiting for Godot, the absurdist, existential Samuel Beckett play, the absolute antonym to Guys even though they both were first staged around 1950. High art versus tacky commerce? (My description.) Meaningless depression versus great songs and wonderful dancing? (ShowGirl’s — my bride’s — comparison.) From the sublime to the ridiculous? (Or vice versa.) Different strokes for different folks? (Clearly!)
No big brain-wrecking reviews today, though. Our family chat on Signal became the venue for a rapid-fire exchange, not only between ShowGirl and me, but also Son One and Grandma G (his mum).
JH: Sitting down to supper at a cool eatery, off to wait for Mr. Godot. [ShowGirl] is very
Vladimir and Estragon, Paul Gross and Tom McCamus. From the Festival site.
excited for all this existential waiting!
JH [later, at intermission of Waiting]: It’s astounding. [ShowGirl] has just left! The couple behind are leaving. People should know what they’re in for, but it’s standard in this run, at least so I hear, for the second-half audience to be substantially smaller than the first. This is in the big Festival Theatre, not some alt-venue. I am kind of stunned. This thing persists, but the play isn’t kind to us at all.
SG [walking back to the B&B]: I didn’t get the point of being with these men at all. Didn’t want to spend another minute with their absurdist conversation that made no sense to me!!!
Grandma G [a former actor and ever-lover of the theatre]: And that is the point. So glad to get it through someone else and not pay the ticket price.
SG: I think we should be paid to watch it, LOL!
GG: What a colossal mistake for the Festival
GG [the next morning]: I have a close friend who saw it, front row, on Broadway with Keanu Reeves. Stellar!
Son One: Good show. Dad, did you enjoy it?
JH: I did, though there was no joy infusion….I laughed out loud more than once, a victory of sorts. It *is* desperately funny in its way, and the production aims for that to a substantial degree. I got more inside the thing in act 2, the characters and their situations becoming more poignant and distinct. It is a strange and strangely powerful, enduring thing. Estragon was Tom McCamus, who played Willy in Salesman Saturday. [I had poached an extra dose of dour theatre by coercing a buddy to see Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman, a play of similar vintage, a couple of days earlier.] What a double! The acting and the wordplay, even when I still felt outside Godot, was admirable and fascinating to me. I am still processing. I read the program, I pored over Wikipedia’s discussion while Diana slept, after our point-counterpoint post-game breakdown…
Yeah. Part of my remaining “outside” the thing was because of The Thing, but some of it was equivalent to critiquing the therapist during counselling, or mentally coaching the coach while the coach is trying to coach (have been guilty on both charges!!)—I was asking Why stage it here? and Who are all these resourced people? and What do they think they’re doing here? and Diana must hate this but she’s quiet and still seated! (But she fairly rocketed out of her seat when the intermission lights came up! That was a show in itself. Wow.)
GG: The friend was riveted by the Broadway performance. Godot is such a risk — when it loses folks or goes bad, it goes colossally so. Ugh. To me Waiting for Godot is kind of surprise therapy, forcing the audience into themselves and their personal waiting and pushing parts. Some of us are open or at least lulled into this breaking of the agreement between performance and personal space. Some of us, quite rightly, will leap up and say “WAIT A MINUTE! This is not what I came here for!”
JH [two nights later, at the Festival Theatre, responding to GG]: Yup, that was We Two.
“But the guys only doin’ it / For some doll…!”
Festival website
I have decided not to leave at the intermission for Guys and Dolls, though I had already play-acted my premature indignation at the play (inherent falsity, glorification of vulgar and immoral behaviour, the lustful American perversion of “love”, not to *mention* the strange and unnatural proclivity for characters to start singing Songs They Somehow Already Know in response to the merest hint of emotion or plot twist!) over breakfast this morning, so I should make it through. Especially since watching SG watching (and singing and seat-dancing the show) is an entertainment unto itself!
That was fun to remember.