It’s here-the first round of Nerd Cactus Stratford reviews for 2018!!!
So far, the verdict is “amazing with a heavy smattering of fun.” Of course, it will get much darker from here…
See, we started with the light, frothy shows, but we’re about to dive into the heavy stuff. Yesterday we saw The Music Man and The Tempest (incidentally, the two shows I covered in our pre-Stratford ramp up). Both were wonderful, high-quality, visually stunning shows (as expected) and both were over too quickly. (Which is probably why we thought today was still Tuesday?)
The Music Man
To begin, let’s take a closer look at Meredith Willson’s The Music Man. As I mentioned, this musical is nothing if not charming, and it’s so full of heart, joy, and sticky, sappy nostalgia that even the most miserable of misers can’t help but feel their hearts melt.
Donna Feore’s direction is solid, but it’s her choreography that truly shines. Her high-energy approach to numbers like “Shipoopi,” “76 Trombones,” and even “Marian the Librarian” is breathtaking. As a matter of fact, just watching “76 Trombones,” left me exhausted. I felt winded in the best way ever. Seriously. And kudos to Devon Michel Brown for performing 4 backflips and a front flip over the course of the show.
The cast is led by Daren A. Herbert and Danielle Wade in the roles of Harold Hill and Marian Paroo, but the brilliant supporting cast doesn’t really need to be led. There is so much kinetic energy onstage that it is impossible to pick out a “weak link.” The ensemble of agile dancers consistently hams it up, but if there’s any place for “golly gee” smiles, this is it. And it works.
Herbert is loveable yet sly and Wade’s rich soprano has surprising depth even in her highest register. Steve Ross and Blythe Wilson as Mayor Shinn and his eccentric wife Eulalie MacKecknie Shinn are the perfect comedic duo, providing unexpected laughs and well-timed schtick that doesn’t actually feel “schticky.”
All told, we were all smiles from start to finish and loved pretty much everything about this production. We were hardpressed to find something that didn’t play well or that we downright disliked. The cast was well-balanced, the costumes were beautiful, the music was brilliant, and the choreography was engaging. Oh, and the horse in “The Wells Fargo Wagon” was a piece of theatre magic that actually confused us into thinking there was a live horse on stage. (Albeit for a very brief minute.)
The Tempest
Our Tuesday evening show was Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In Stratford’s version, Prospero was presented as a woman, brilliantly performed by Martha Henry. I think Martha Henry is one of the most convincing Shakespearean actors I have ever seen on stage. I understood every line of her dialogue. Beyond Shakespeare’s words, Henry brought deliberate inflection, movement, action, and subtext to the stage in spades.
The other standout in this cast was undeniably Andre Morin’s Ariel. Clad in costuming that alludes to his previous sentence trapped in a tree, his take on the spirit was nimble and efficient. Rather than play the character as mischievous or brooding, Morin tempered his longing for freedom with a genuine concern for his mistress and a need to please.
Beyond the strength of the cast and their excellent execution of Antoni Cimolino’s direction, The Tempest dazzles with its lighting design and costume design. From floating planets to shimmering lights encompassed in the gnarled roots of Prospero’s cell, the lighting in this show is pretty magical. And the costuming was just gorgeous. From Juno’s peacock costume to Caliban’s incredible half-fish deformity and Ariel’s outfit of bark, the stage was filled with the fantastic. But my favorite thing is ever is Prospero’s magic robe which incorporates pieces of the robes worn by every other Prospero in the Stratford Festival’s history. Beyond that, it contains material from the dress Martha Henry wore when she played Miranda during the 1962 festival season as well as pieces of the original tent in which Stratford’s plays were first performed. How cool is that??
That’s all for now! Coriolanus is on the agenda for tonight and we’ll see An Ideal Husband and To Kill a Mockingbird tomorrow, so expect more soon!
-A
Nerd Cactus 