Stratford's Free Shakespeare Festival: All The World's A Screen
The Stratford Festival, which was supposed to open this month, is closed.
As a substitute, the festival is providing free online HD films of some of its past plays on the Stratford Festival website (https://www.stratfordfestival.ca) The 12 films, shot to present the stage version without imposing a cinematic style, are from an ambitious 10-year project, started in 2015, to document all 38 of Shakespeare’s plays with the repertory ensemble.
Each film opens on a Thursday night with a 7 p.m. "viewing party" (you groundlings can heckle via Twitter) and will stay up on the site for three weeks. Straining the idea of making Shakespeare relevant, the plays are divided up into pandemic-themed categories including: Social Order, Isolation, Minds Pushed to the Edge and Relationships, which aren't terribly useful. (Hey, what was that Shakespearian play about relationships, again?). But here goes.
Prospero (Martha Henry) dispenses sage advice to daughter Miranda (Mamie Zwettler)
Social Order:
King Lear, (April 23-14) A 2014 production, with Colm Feore, as a robust King Lear and Stephen Ouimette as his acerbic fool.
Coriolanus (May 7-29) Quebec’s stage genius Robert LePage directed this multimedia-infused production, starring Andre Sills as the Roman war hero, who, too proud or noble to pander to the common rabble to become elected consul, turns on his people and joins up with Rome’s enemies. Memo: Shakespeare wasn’t really into democracy.
Macbeth (May 7-28) stars Ian Lake as Macbeth and Krysten Pellerin as Lady Macbeth from the 2016 production, praised by critics for its visceral horror, including a witches’ cauldron containing, according to one review, "goo-covered babies and decapitated heads." For extra relevancy points, this is the play about compulsive handwashing.
Isolation:
The Tempest (May 14-June 4) features an 80-year-old Martha Henry as the wizard Prospero in this philosophical shipwreck fable.
Timon of Athens (May 32-June 11), Shakespeare's dirty money play stars Joseph Ziegler this modern-dress meditation on the income gap about a merchant who transitions from affable, generous spendthrift to a broke, vengeful misanthrope.
Love's Labour's Lost (May 28-June 18). A comedy -- finally! In this 2015 production, the young King of Navarre and his three buddies decide to swear off women while they pursue their studies. But then the Princess of France arrives with three of her friends and hilarity ensues - until the downbeat ending.
Minds Pushed to the Edge:
Hamlet (June 4-25). Jonathan Goad played an athletic version of the melancholy Dane in this 2016 production of Shakespeare’s best known hit. The play was supposed to be produced again this summer, with Amek Umeh, the first woman of colour to play the role at Stratford.
King John (June 11-July 2). Tom McCamus is the cynical King John and Graham Abbey plays The Bastard, or more formally, Philip The Bastard, in this 2014 production. The director is Tim Carroll, who’s currently artistic director of The Shaw Festival.
Pericles, Prince of Tyre (June 18-July 9). This 2015 production of Shakespeare's episodic play (it's estimated he only wrote half of it), stars Evan Buliung as the peripatetic Prince of Tyre with Deborah Hays playing both his wife and long-lost daughter.
Relationships
Anthony and Cleopatra. (June 25-July 16) From the 2014 Stratford production of Shakespeare's middle-aged love story, wtih Geraint Wyn Davies as the Roman general, Marc Antony and Yanna McIntosh as the Egyptian queen, Cleopatra.
Romeo and Juliet (July 2-23) Antoine Yared and Sara Farb play the leads in a spritely 2017 production of the play that emphasizes the characters' youth and showcases the language.
The Taming of the Shrew (July 9-30) Spoiler alert in the title. This 2015 production starred real- life couple Ben Carson as Petruchio and Deborah Hay as the angry Katharina, in a modern take on the unsettling play. Or, in the immortal words of Cole Porter, from his musical adaptation, Kiss Me Kate, "If she says your behavior is heinous,/Kick her right in the Coriolanus."