GETTING THERE:Stratford, Ontario, is about a seven-hour drive from Chicago, crossing the border at Sarnia, Ontario. Aside from Toronto's Pearson International Airport (80 minutes away), United Airlines has added two non-stop flights a day between Chicago and London, Ontario, a small airport only 45 minutes from Stratford. Affordable rooms can be had at the
Arden Park Hotel (552 Ontario St.), and bigger, more convenient, above-the-tavern rooms can be rented at
Bentley's (99 Ontario St.). Restaurants with local cuisine abound; there's the high-end
Bijou Restaurant (105 Erie St.) and the new, affordable and high-quality
Simply Fish and Chips (118 Downie St.). If you like backstage gossip, head to
Foster's (111 Downie St.) or
Down the Street (30 Ontario St.) after your evening show.
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For a full schedule of dates and shows, visit stratfordfestival.ca or call 800-567-1600 | MAP _________________________
STRATFORD, Ontario — “Now my charms are all o'erthrown,” remarks Christopher Plummer's Prospero in the epilogue to “The Tempest.” Never was more nonsense spoken from the venerable stage of the Festival Theatre.
The amply funded Canadian stages, the envy of most points south, are humming this summer in this bucolic Ontario town, with all manner of expansive yet cheerfully accessible theatrical activity. Shakespeare is followed by Cole Porter's brush therewith. And Jacques of the Forest of Arden gives way to the Jacques Brel of the Paris cabaret, as channeled by a zesty Quebecois named Nathalie Nadon, who can really put the “Ne” in Brel's “Ne Me Quitte Pas” (“Do Not Leave Me”).
And at the age of 80 — when most of us mere mortals find ourselves at least approaching the seventh of those famous ages of man — Plummer's famous voice has only become more urgent and imperative. “The Tempest,” which opened June 25 under the direction of Des McAnuff, is full of all manner of happily eclectic directorial motifs, from a winged angel in flight to a puckish, Cirque-like Ariel to an unusually rustic Miranda, played by Trish Lindstrom, one of the Stratford Shakespeare Festival's best youngsters. But, in the end, all that stimulating but ultimately secondary stuff falls away like temporary shadows, consigned to long Stratford memories, and McAnuff has the sense to leave us alone with Plummer and his old ghosts.
Stratford, now the biggest theater company in North America and an annual destination for thousands of Chicagoans, has used this most personal of Shakespearean dramas before as a lifetime achievement award. No wonder. When an aging giant like Plummer says “Gentle breath of yours my sails/ Must fill, or else my project fails,” you realize that the actor, his whole darn life a project to please, is really no different from the athlete. He's always judged by the last game.
You feel the tension of Plummer going all in, on one last pot. But in this case, the winning hand has been played all night long. Unobtrusively, wisely, gently and flawlessly.