Our Stratford

Globe Restaurant Closes

2007-07-16T15:58:00.000-05:00

A sad bit of news in the Stratford Restaurant scene happened last week was the closing of the Globe Restaurant. Succeeding at making great food does not always equate to succeeding in business. Chef Max Holbrook, had always excelled at providing wonderful food at the various Stratford restaurants over the years. Globe was his attempt at food and business at the same time, unfortunately for Max he had a hard lesson when it comes to business.

The financial demands of maintaining a restaurant over two winters caught up to him and the gloomy situation of not recovering during the peak season made it even sadder. Never the less, Max is holding his head up and taking care of the necessary paperwork to finish of the Globe. Several restaurants have shown interest in getting Max to be part of their kitchen crew, he however has not decided where to go.

Win a trip to Stratford

2007-07-05T08:45:00.000-05:00

Enter the contest at the following link
http://www.ontariotravel.net/fourseasonscontest/

Backstage Masterpiece, Slings and Arrows and Stratford

2007-07-04T10:20:00.000-05:00

by Ed Siegel, The Phoenix

INSPIRED: You don’t need to know a thing about King Lear to be moved by William Hutt’s performance as cancer-stricken actor Charles Kingsman (here with Sarah Polley as Cordelia).

As much as I adored The Sopranos, I have to wonder about the rush to anoint it the best television series ever. In fact, I don’t think it was even the best series to leave the air this past season. Those honors go to another show in which the members of a dysfunctional extended family bedded and betrayed one another at every turn while we waited — breathlessly — to see whether a central character would get whacked.

We’re talking Shakespeare, but have no fear. This is Will of the 21st-century world, not of the 16th and 17th. Some people have said that if Shakespeare were alive today, he’d be writing for television. I don’t know about that, but I’m willing to bet he’d love every minute of Slings & Arrows, the hilarious and hip series about a Shakespearean troupe in Canada that bears more than a passing resemblance to the real one in Stratford, Ontario.

The producers of the series, which aired on the Sundance Channel in the US, said they were interested in doing only three years, and true to their word, they finished up this past season — the final six episodes will join the previous two years on DVD shelves this Tuesday (Acorn Media). And whereas other great series in their last bow have gone for the mighty final gesture — Seinfeld and St. Elsewhere, in addition to The Sopranos — Slings & Arrows gracefully glides into an ending so sublime . . .

Unlike David Chase, I’ll finish that thought, but let’s start at the beginning. Oliver Welles — any relation to Orson is probably intentional — is the artistic director of the safely successful New Burbage Theatre Festival. He turns on the TV one day and sees his former protégé, Geoffrey Tenant, chain himself to the doors of his theater rather than let the landlord close it down. This is what theater should be about, thinks Oliver, who goes out and gets soused as he recalls how he lost his artistic vision. As he staggers about, he’s run over and killed by a truck carrying ham.

Funny, huh? Actually, it is. Oliver may be gone, but he’s not forgotten. Geoffrey is brought in at the last minute as the caretaker for the season, which includes Hamlet, the play that brought him fame and drove him to a nervous breakdown that was helped along by Oliver’s seduction of Geoffrey’s girlfriend, Ellen — this notwithstanding Oliver’s decided preference for the male of the species.

Before you can say, “There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,” Oliver is haunting Geoffrey’s waking hours with a hint of how better to interpret Hamlet here and a bit of spiritus ex machina there, the latter to get rid of a wayward Ophelia. This could all be Edgar-Allan-Poe-meets-Topper if the writing and acting weren’t so extraordinary.

The relationship between Stephen Ouimette’s Oliver and Paul Gross’s Geoffrey is so vivid and charged with envy and black-humored bitterness — with touches of love and respect — that it’s hard even to entertain the notion that Oliver is a manifestation of Geoffrey’s dottiness. The rest of the New Burbagers think Geoffrey’s lost it as they overhear him talking to the ghost — which, of course, they can’t see. When he challenges the wonderfully loopy postmodern director, Darren Nichols, to a duel, there’s not much doubt left about Geoffrey’s sanity.

What makes Slings & Arrows more than an inspired comedy, however, is the way the Shakespearean similarities are played for more than laughs. Engrossing analyses of the scripts are scattered throughout each episode, particularly when Geoffrey or Oliver is explicating a scene. To that woeful Ophelia, who thinks that her character’s little songs are just gibberish, Geoffrey pleads: “Ophelia is a child. . . . Her father is murdered by her boyfriend and he is suddenly shipped off to England. She is alone for the first time, grieving and heartbroken and guilty, because as far as she’s concerned, it’s all her fault. She ignored her brother’s advice and fell in love with Hamlet and now her father is dead, all because of her. And the pain and the loss and the shame and the guilt — all of this — is gnawing away at this little child’s mind and it comes out as little songs: ‘And will he not come again? And will he not come again? No, no, he is dead.’ My father’s dead and I killed him.”

Along with the compassion comes such perfectly timed scorn for the actress’s lack of understanding that you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. But Gross and Ouimette are only the beginning of the talent here. Mark McKinney (Kids in the Hall) and Susan Coyne — two of the writers, along with Bob Martin and Sean Reycraft — play Richard Smith-Jones, the festival’s business manager, and his administrative assistant with boundless degrees of exasperation. Don McKellar’s Darren Nichols is the pretentious postmodern auteur who keeps coming back for a licking each season. Martha Burns is slyly sexy as Ellen, Geoffrey’s former (and potentially future) lover — as well as Gertrude, Lady Macbeth, and Regan at the festival. Rachel McAdams takes over as Ophelia in the first season and then goes off to Hollywood (more art imitating life) at the beginning of Season 2; Sarah Polley (the director of Away from Her) is Cordelia in Season 3. Two of the more delightful characters are Graham Harley and Michael Polley (Sarah’s sire), who begin each show in the after-show pub singing irreverent music-hall send-ups of the Shakespeare shows being performed.

Although the story lines echo Hamlet, Macbeth and King Lear, they’re hardly slaves to them. Season 2’s most outrageous moments come when Richard decides the festival needs rebranding and goes off to an ultrahip advertising agency led by the Nehru-jacketed Sanjay (Colm Feore); he, without telling Richard, puts up posters trashing both the festival and its patrons, who are pictured as being on life-support. There are also secondary story lines that have to do with what’s happening on the smaller stage — a beautifully rendered Romeo and Juliet that captures the play’s eroticism even as the postmodern director tries to undermine the emotion.

Even if you think the Bard’s a bore, this series is great television. The more you know about Shakespeare and the theater, the more you’ll get out of Slings & Arrows, but you don’t need to know a thing about King Lear to be moved by William Hutt’s performance as Charles Kingsman, who’s determined to play Lear before his cancer kills him. (Hutt, a legendary Lear at Stratford, was himself dying of leukemia; he passed away last week.) Neither do you have to know anything about Rent to appreciate the delicious satire of that musical in the second stage’s production of East Hastings.

Yes, the second stage gets handed over to a musical. And that’s another of the show’s biting subtexts — the contemporary clashes between art and commerce, the performing arts and the popular arts, smartening up and dumbing down, elitism and populism.

Which brings us back to the third-season ending. In those final images, we’re reminded that live performance and great art are transformative, even if there’s just one person in the audience. It’s a message that 99 percent of theatrical experiences fail to deliver — but that one in 100 keeps us coming back for more. Leave it to this one-in-a-million TV show to make the same case.

Stratford Events and Attractions for July

2007-07-04T08:49:00.000-05:00

Click each page to enlarge

William Hutt Funeral Arrangements in Stratford

2007-06-30T10:44:00.000-05:00

A public funeral service for the late William Hutt will be held on Monday, July 9 at 2 p.m. in Stratford, at St. James Anglican Church, 41 Mornington St.

Hutt, one of Canada's most acclaimed and respected classical actors, died Wednesday in Stratford. He was 87.

A visitation will also be held on Sunday, July 8, at W.G. Young Funeral Home, 430 Huron St., Stratford.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the Stratford Festival of Canada or the Stratford General Hospital. For more information, call the funeral home at (519) 271-7411.

William Hutt, Stratford's Finest dies at 87

2007-06-27T14:43:00.000-05:00

Stage actor William Hutt dies at 87

STRATFORD, Ontario (AP) — William Hutt, widely regarded as one of Canada's finest classical actors and a company member at the Stratford Festival for almost four decades, has died at the age of 87.

Hutt died Wednesday of leukemia at Stratford General Hospital, the Festival announced.

At the Stratford Festival, where he was a founding member, Hutt was involved in 130 productions as either an actor or director. Among his more memorable performances were the title characters in "King Lear," "Volpone," "Tartuffe," "Richard II" and "Titus Andronicus," as well as such diverse roles as Prospero in "The Tempest," James Tyrone in Eugene O'Neill's "Long Day's Journey Into Night," Thomas More in "A Man for All Seasons" and Lady Bracknell in Oscar Wilde's "The Importance of Being Earnest."

"He was our northern star," said Antoni Cimolino, the Festival's general director. "He shone strong, bright and true, helping the rest of us find our way."

On Broadway, Hutt was seen as the lawyer in Edward Albee's "Tiny Alice" in 1964 and four years later in a production of George Bernard Shaw's "Saint Joan," starring Diana Sands, at the Vivian Beaumont Theater in Lincoln Center.

Yet Shakespeare remained a fascination for the actor throughout his career. When asked about the power of the Bard in a 2006 interview, Hutt said, "First of all, he froze the English language. Nobody has used the English language better than he has. Nobody. ... And also the world that Shakespeare creates with his language, his story lines, his characters, it's an incredible world."

With his rumbling voice and his lion-in-winter mane of white hair, Hutt commanded the stage well into his 80s, winning praise for his last turn onstage at Stratford as Prospero in "The Tempest," in 2005.

In honor of Richard Monette, the Festival's outgoing artistic director, Hutt agreed to return for a role this season in Albee's "A Delicate Balance," which opens in August. He eventually had to withdraw because of ill health.

Born in Toronto on May 2, 1920, Hutt served in World War II, returning home where he attended the University of Toronto, graduating from its Trinity College in 1949. He began his stage career in summer stock and then went to work for the Canadian Repertory Theatre as an associate director.

Hutt joined the Stratford Festival in its inaugural year in 1953 under Tyrone Guthrie's direction. The actor remained with the company for some four decades, except for an absence in the mid-1980s when he moved to the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake for several years.

Despite his command of the stage, Hutt was never a snob about the theater. He won praise for his role as Sir John A. Macdonald in the mid-1970s Canadian television miniseries "The National Dream." And in recent years, Hutt appeared on the acclaimed TV series "Slings & Arrows," in which he played a somewhat grumpier version of himself, an aging Shakespearean master.

There were no immediate survivors.

A funeral will be held at St. James Anglican Church in Stratford.

William Hutt in Slings and Arrows, Season 3, Episode 4

William Hutt, Canadian stage loses a legend

By Laura Cudworth, Staff reporter
Stratford Beacon Herald
Feature
William Hutt: Canadian stage loses a legend

William Hutt, arguably the last true Canadian theatre icon, died peacefully at 5 o’clock this morning. He was 87.

The legend was beloved by his fellow actors at the Stratford Festival and had a reputation for being extremely generous, especially with younger actors.

“He was our northern star,” said Antoni Cimolino, Festival general director. “He shone strong, bright and true, helping the rest of us find our way.”

Mr. Hutt retired from the stage at the end of the 2005 Festival season. He played Prospero in “The Tempest.” At the time, he told The Beacon Herald it was the right part with which to end his career.

“I can’t think of a better one, frankly,” he said then. “I’ve spent many of my years in Shakespeare’s world, and with so many of his characters that to play one that says goodbye anyway is not too much of a stretch.”

Mr. Hutt had intended to return to the stage this season as Tobias in “A Delicate Balance” as a tribute to longtime friend and outgoing artistic director Richard Monette. Unfortunately, health concerns forced him to withdraw.

Quoting Hamlet, Mr. Monette said of his passing this morning, “He was a man, take him for all in all: we shall not look upon his like again.”

Mr. Hutt’s theatre career spanned 57 years and took him to New York and England. But he called Stratford home. Among the British imports like Tyrone Guthrie and Alec Guinness who helped launch the Festival, Mr. Hutt was also part of the inaugural year in 1952.

Since then, he has played King Lear, The Fool to Peter Ustinov’s Lear, Titus Andronicus, Falstaff and Richard II among many others.

Though his Shakespearean performances were unforgettable, he has said he was best known for his performance as Lady Bracknell in “The Importance of Being Earnest” by Oscar Wilde, which he first played in 1975 and reprised twice for the Festival.

Mr. Hutt was born in Toronto on May 2, 1920.

The Queen and Albert Bed and Breakfast in Stratford, Ontario, Canada

2007-06-21T16:34:00.000-05:00

www.queenandalbert.com

Its time for a little shamelss self promotion because I can and I will promote my paying gig. First let me make it clear, we are the coolest B&B in Stratford, if not all of Ontario. So if you are looking for teddy bears and dolilies, a dusty rose colour scheme, I will gladly assist you to get another B&B in Stratford. If you are into the arts, The Queen and Albert is for you. You will feel relaxed as soon as you check-in. The breakfast is a creative treat everyday and our knowledge of the food scene in Stratford is second to none.

We are conveniently located a five minute walk up the street from the Stratford Festival Theatre and a ten minute walk to downtown Stratford. The Queen & Albert has the best elements of a B&B and a hotel combined. This combination provides our guests with a unique service. Our reputation as being one of Stratford's best bed and breakfasts is based on professional and friendly service. We have four well appointed suites with large en suite bathrooms (bathtub/showers), central air, cable T.V., seating areas, desks, wireless internet access, fridges and of course comfortable beds.

www.queenandalbert.com

Andrew Watson

Amede Lamarche Shines at the Church Restaurant in Stratford, Ontario

2007-06-21T08:59:00.000-05:00

Stratford chef uses innovations to work magic
TORONTO STAR
Marion Kane
Food Columnist

STRATFORD–Amédé Lamarche is holding a smoking gun.

But this talented, fast-talking young man is not embroiled in criminal activity. In fact, it's quite the opposite. He's using this nifty culinary device to infuse a dish with the delectable taste and aroma of smoke.

Lamarche, 32, is executive chef at The Church in downtown Stratford, one of this city's most elegant, established and finest restaurants.

Born and raised in Welland to a French father and Italian mother, this sometimes intense fellow with the easy laugh and a passion for food doesn't have formal chef's training and calls himself "mentored."

That may explain his innovative cooking style and eagerness to embrace new ideas.

In fact, it's a hot new idea called molecular gastronomy that brings me to The Church kitchen where Lamarche is wielding that smoking gun.

He's aiming the hand-held, vacuum-driven smoker filled with applewood chips at a "sausage" made of two rabbit loins encrusted with chopped cashews, shallots and chanterelles, all bound together with transglutaminase, a substance popular with chefs who like a little science with their slicing and dicing.

Ancho chili droplets, garnish for this dish, are made from a liquid mixture of ancho chilies, juiced red pepper and sodium alginate.

Our dark-eyed, spiky-haired chef explains the latter: "It's a gelling agent derived from seaweed. It will react with the calcium chloride in this water bath."

Sure enough, the drops he's releasing into the bath magically turn into tiny, tear-shaped, jelly-like pearls. They soon pepper a delicate consommé laced with cocoa that bathes the rabbit.

Now to that gun – the ideal device for capturing smoke under a white china cloche that Lamarche quickly places over the creation he matter-of-factly calls rabbit stew. "When lifted tableside – voila! – out comes a puff of smoke."

Surgical tubing, a couple of siphons and a large syringe are other tools of this chef's trade. He shoots green pea noodles made of pea "water" thickened with a vegan gel called agar-agar out of a long plastic surgical tube using a siphon, then warms and plates them with a creamy sauce of smoked coconut and dainty shreds of basil. Spaghetti carbonara, eat your heart out!

There are no words to describe Lamarche's brilliant foie gras consommé topped with foie gras foam that I sip from a shooter glass through a sweet vanilla pod.

He calls the use of technology and chemicals in cooking "just a more open dialogue between haute cuisine, manufacturing and science."

His enthusiasm for it is contagious.

"I'm in a position now to do cool things for customers – it makes me very happy."

Dogs on Stage in Stratford

2007-06-20T05:22:00.000-05:00

Rottweiler has role in Stratford production

By JEREMY DICKSON

dickson.jeremy@dailygleaner.com
Published Monday June 18th, 2007
Appeared on page A1

They say you can't teach an old dog new tricks, but don't tell that to Jasmine, a 12-year-old Rottweiler from Fredericton who recently took her first acting gig in Ontario.

Jasmine moved with her owner David Campbell to Stratford, Ont., six years ago. Campbell, a former Theatre New Brunswick staff member, took a job as assistant technical director with the Stratford Festival.

The festival put out a casting call recently for an old dog to play the role of Candy's sheepdog in the festival's version of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men.

"Jasmine's older now and quite lame so she fit the part, but, believe it or not, she got the role as an understudy," Campbell said.

A dog named Chokydar, three years older than Jasmine and owned by acclaimed theatre actor Rod Beattie, originally got the part but the dog eventually tired of the role, Campbell said.

"Chokydar was not into playing the role anymore, so Jasmine moved up into the principle position," he said.

The pooch made it through rehearsals and has now performed in front of an audience for six preview shows. She is scheduled for 42 performances.

"The part in the play calls for a dog on the verge of death that actually gets let out and shot," Campbell said. "She does that quite convincingly now."

Despite the Rottweiler breed's reputation as a dangerous animal, Campbell said Jasmine is mellow.

"She's let in to her mat onstage, she lays down, then the actors perform around her," Campbell said.

"Then she's let offstage with the actor that plays her owner."

Campbell said he used to take the dog himself to the theatre, but Jasmine now has her own handler.

Dog handler Jetta Heinen is responsible for Jasmine's arrivals and departures and said the rising star couldn't be sweeter.

"Jasmine is pretty easygoing when I get her, and she's happy to see me because she knows that she's going to the theatre," Heinen said.

"Everybody is so affectionate with her, plus she gets treats," she said.

Campbell said Jasmine loves hanging out in the green room to socialize before each show.

"It's a big social event for her," he said, but it's not all fun and games.

According to Campbell, treats are hurting Jasmine's exit scenes.

"Jasmine has become quite familiar with all the action and she knows that instead of getting shot she actually gets a big treat backstage," he said.

"As soon as the actor who's supposed to shoot her starts talking about shooting her, she jumps up immediately and looks super enthusiastic because she knows her treat is coming.

"We're trying to figure out a way for her to slow it down a bit."

Campbell said he gets paid $25 per show, but he never expected to make money off of his dog.

"I plan to donate the money at the end of the year to the SPCA and a local off-leash dog park," he said.

Even though Campbell gets paid, Jasmine gets all the attention.

"Tourists that have seen the play have already recognized her on the street," he said.

Stratford versus Wal-Mart, June 25, Stratford City Hall 7:00 P.M. Stratford, Ontario, Canada

2007-06-15T14:10:00.000-05:00

Resisting getting involved again with politics at Stratford City council is tough considering how disgusted I have been with the handling of certain matters in the past. The issue to get me involved again should have been a done issue a year ago. It was quite clear that the city and the majority of citizens did not want Walmart. It is safe to say that citizens voted for certain councilors to safeguard their fine city including past, present and future attacks by the mega nasty corporation and its business practices.

Time and time again, the tactics of Walmart have been nasty, unethical and have little regard for the social fibre of the country they are doing business in. They have experts on their staff and a bevy of consulting firms to distort the facts. These manipulated facts are fed to planners at the municipal level as well as politicians. They will target the less intelligent politicians to sway the vote their way. This has been documented time and time again and for some citizens in Stratford they clearly need to be doing their homework on such a corporation.

The citizens and the politicians that represent them need to evaluate their moral guide posts. It can’t be just about getting a bargain no matter what the expense is globally and locally. Is Walmart a company that represents good morals and is it a corporation that Stratford wants as part of its community. Stratford is clearly a better community than Walmart is a corporation. Morals alone should be a deciding factor that a councilor is voting on for the best interests of Stratford residents.

In reality, the fight itself cannot be based solely on morals as the Ontario Municipal Board might eventually rule on the matter and they cannot base their votes on morals. They will rule on good planning practices. One of the hardest things for us all to understand is when it comes to what the community as a whole set out in the Official Municipal Plan and its amendments.

It however is very clear that the citizens, the city, the planners and planning consultants several years ago had an understanding to set a plan of how our community was to be and the future of developments. This is an Official Plan. At no point did we hear an up roar about certain lands being used for designated purposes. The community as a whole had a consensus as to the city’s being. Our Economic Development department would have various types of property that potential investors to the community could purchase relative to their specific type of economic investment. Some options were you could purchase land in the west end to develop retail facilities or industrial land behind Festival Marketplace to build a factory.

So in essence, Walmart is going against what the citizens wished for and what the city put in place to safeguard these wishes. This however does not mean that our elected officials can’t be swayed by Walmart to go against the majority of citizens and against good solid planning practices.

So please educate yourselves with the following videos posted and attend the meeting at Stratford City Hall on June 25 at 7:00 P.M.

Also, please let our city politicians clearly know how much we do not want Wal-Mart in our fabulous city by phoning them, talking to them or emailing them. You can email the councilors and get their email addresses at www.city.stratford.on.ca

Gallery Stratford, 40th Birthday Party

2007-06-14T08:49:00.000-05:00

You're Invited to Gallery Stratford's 40th Birthday Party!
Saturday, June 16, 2007 from 2 to 5 PM Celebrating 40 years of art

Drop in and enjoy FREE

* Birthday cake and refreshments
* Art activities
* Music by Cow & Sow
* Entertainment by Dance Aarts Academy

Celebrating 40 years of art

In addition to the birthday festivities, the Gallery will be raffling off two prizes at 4 PM. The grand prize is a colour print by Canada's Shaman artist Norval Morriseau (valued over $800), and second prize an Apple IPOD Nano. Each raffle ticket sells for $20, with the funds going towards Gallery programs. Tickets are available from the Gallery in advance or at the event. Winners need not be in attendance.

Gallery 96, Out of Place: Landscape Displacements and Disconnects

2007-06-14T05:57:00.000-05:00

Out of Place: Landscape displacements and disconnects
Troy Oullette, Paul Walde, Jeff Willmore and Grant Wilson

Curated by Sylvia Curtis-Norcross

"You can't paint in this climate" says Jeff Willmore, not that he doesn't of course - it's just that the cultural climate is as un-favourable for landscape painters as the environmental climate is becoming for the very landscape itself. In the heat of this growing antagonism we ask - do we have a first person relationship to this land?

In Out of Place Jeff Willmore, Troy Oullette, Paul Walde and Grant Wilson address the landscape with varying degrees of separation from the land itself through varying technical intermediaries. The landscapes appear as sounds and images and objects whose disconnections from life belie " under the bell jar" artificiality. These are necessarily indoor installations - urban in their conception. The monitors, recorders and projection units could never survive the environments they describe.

This is a long way from the now generally perceived " quaint" image of the Canadian artist stalwartly painting the landscape en plein air. The conceit of the artist as hero, where a temperature of minus 20 made the paintings all the more true, is reduced to nothing. Here is the landscape of the working man of 2007 - manufactured and presented in the climate controlled indoors.

Out of Place is contiguous with the way of life that takes millions of Canadians in their heated cars from garage to garage to cubicle 5 mornings a week. These are the landscapes of now and we must ask ourselves - is this a relationship we want to stay in?

Colm Feore, Award of Distinction

2007-06-13T06:30:00.000-05:00

Vinay Menon
The Toronto Star

BANFF - Colm Feore leans forward in his emerald chair and smiles.

A rustic, three-level chandelier hangs nearby, casting amber shadows on the Tudor balcony. Outside, fog sits atop the Rockies, mist drifts through pine trees in the Bow Valley.

We are inside the Banff Springs Hotel, a castle in the mountains. And this backdrop is appropriate: Canada's prince of a leading man framed by majestic beauty on the day he is crowned with a lifetime Award of Distinction.

Feore's body of work, about 100 projects and counting, includes stage (Hamlet, Julius Caesar, Don Juan), film (Thirty Two Short Films About Glenn Gould, Chicago) and television (Trudeau, Slings & Arrows).

If anybody here at the Banff World Television Festival is entitled to immodesty, it's him. But as he begins to reflect on what it all means, he is so humble, I'm tempted to lean across the oval table and grab his lapels.

"The key to whatever it is that I've got going on is my long-standing mantra: `Just keep showing up,'" says Feore. "Very early on in my career I realized that if you could remain standing at the end of the battle, you basically won."

Standing may be the wrong word; Feore never stops moving. He just returned from shooting a French period film in New Orleans. There were work-related detours to Detroit, Montreal and Toronto.

"I guess because I come from a repertory theatre environment, I like doing six things at the same time," he says. "It makes sense to me."

As he glances over the wrought-iron rail, Feore's face recalls Trudeau. Seconds later, Gould flickers in his eyes. And on it goes, role after iconic role, appearing and fading in a snapshot of body language, a fleeting expression.

It's hard to tell where the performer stops and the man begins.

"That's how I think it should be as an actor," says Feore. "That you can disappear into what you do."

Are there memories that stand out in the blur of time?

"There are watershed moments," he says. "Hamlet was important because it's a great hurdle as an actor. It tells you an awful lot about yourself ... and it gets you ready for the rest of your career."

This becomes a recurring theme. The award, the successes, it's not an end, it's a beginning. At the age of 48, Colm Feore is still getting ready for the rest of his career.

"It's not a matter of arriving," he says. "It's a matter of the journey."

On this journey, Feore has established himself as the consummate professional, the actor's actor, the director's dream, the eternal artist, the curious student. He approaches every role with the same philosophy.

"When you are in the service of someone like Shakespeare, or a character whose worth is undeniable like Trudeau and Gould and you have a responsibility, it's very quickly clear that it's not about you."

Looking back, I ask, what amazes you most about the journey?

"That I'm still working. That I have a career. It's not like there's a plan, Vinay. In however much longer I've got, at some point I'll turn around and look at a resumé that looks as if we had an idea of what we were doing. But it doesn't work like that."

When he's not working, Feore may be found cooking, reading, taking pictures (his work has appeared in this paper) and co-running a frenetic Stratford home – three children, countless activities – with wife Donna, an acclaimed director and choreographer. (Life at home? He quotes Hamlet: "Crowded with incident.")

Does he have any regrets?

"No, I don't. I don't think I'm allowed the luxury of regret."

Then there's a reflective pause.

"If I had my wits about me I might have been less callow in my youth. But you only figure that out with the wisdom of age. I was, if not an angry young man, I was certainly excitable and brash and I'm not sure that was that helpful.

"Now I've realized that slow and steady wins the race."

Lloyd Robertson, Canada'a Walk of Fame

2007-06-11T05:41:00.000-05:00

Our very own TV celebrity to stroll down Walk of Fame
Jim Hagarty, Stratford Gazette

He doesn't sing, dance or score goals, but Lloyd Robertson's 55 years in broadcasting have earned him a star on Canada's Walk of Fame and he'll take his place among the honoured in a ceremony in Toronto on Saturday.

In doing so, the chief anchor and senior editor of CTV News will become the first broadcast journalist to find himself celebrated on the Walk. At first he was somewhat hesitant, he told the Gazette in an interview Wednesday, but he finally agreed, believing it would help others deserving of recognition to also someday be honoured.

"Fame doesn't fall easily on the shoulders of journalists," said Robertson, because it's all about the news, not the reporter.

But when he thought about all the other great Canadian news broadcasters of the past, from his good friend Peter Jennings, to Larry Henderson and even Lorne Greene of eventual Bonanza fame, he felt accepting the honour would set a trend.

Lloyd Robertson was born in Stratford General Hospital in 1934. His family on his father's side were from the Mitchell area where his dad farmed for a time before moving to Stratford and taking a job in the CNR shops "like so many other fathers in those days."

Young Lloyd attended Shakespeare and Anne Hathaway schools before heading to high school at Stratford Collegiate Vocational Institute, now Central Secondary School. Though a career in broadcasting was not something that was obviously in the cards for him at that time, he was always involved in things such as the debating society which developed his interest in current affairs.

"We talked a lot about politics," he said of his former school chums, some of whom went on to successful careers of their own including in the House of Commons.

And Lloyd even performed in a couple of plays at school which might have indicated he didn't mind appearing before audiences.

By the time he reached grades 11 and 12, Robertson had started hanging around CJCS, the local radio station. He and his dad used to listen to a lot of radio news shows out of Toronto and the medium fascinated him. From his Saturday job at Reward Shoes, he'd wander over to the radio station where he got to know some of the people. They eventually let him operate the board and then finally he got his big chance when he did a station break.

"That was the beginning," he said, and as he was already being encouraged by some of his peers there to take up broadcasting, he jumped at the chance of a full-time radio job in 1952 when two or three announcers quit the station at the same time.

From there, he's done just about all there is to do in his business and won every sort of broadcasting award. "Beloved by Canadians," as his media package states, he was voted Canada's most trusted news anchor by TV Guide readers 11 years in a row, and Canada's favourite news anchor by readers of TV Times, the Toronto Sun and NOW Magazine. In 1998, he was awarded the Order of Canada.

Robertson's time in radio was brief, as he left a Guelph radio station in 1954 and moved to television with the CBC. He spent four years in Winnipeg and two years in Ottawa before becoming the anchor of CBC's national news from 1970 to 1976 when he moved to CTV.

Even after 55 years behind the microphone, Lloyd Robertson still loves coming into work and "getting the buzz" of finding out what's going in the world.

"That's what makes the adrenalin flow."

Asked about mentors in the business, Robertson pointed to the late Harry J. Boyle, a former executive producer of the CBC and a Wingham native. But as for idols, people whose style he might have emulated, he said he found out early on the only way to do it was to just be himself.

As for high points in his career, Robertson said there are too many to narrow down but he takes a stab at it: Royal tours, the Centennial year, the Terry Fox Run and Fox's tragic death.

A special day he remembers was the day of the moon landing in 1969. He walked out from the studio into the parking lot, looked up at the moon and marvelled at how great it was to be in a career that allowed him to be a part of such an historic event.

As for his most memorable interview, again, the veteran broadcaster is on the spot, but he offers up one he had with a former prime minister, the late Lester B. Pearson. Though he was nervous, he said, the prime minister put him at ease.

Had Lloyd Robertson turned left instead of right and decided on another path in life, he speculates he might have gone into the ministry, as the minister of St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church in Stratford was encouraging him to do as a young man. But it's something he's never thought much about as he feels he was destined to follow the path he did.

Lloyd Robertson and his wife Nancy have been married for more than 40 years. They have four daughters. A strong supporter of numerous charities, he participates every year in the telethon for the Hospital for Sick Children.

Other inductees on the Walk of Fame in Toronto for 2007 include Johnny Bower, Rick Hansen, Jill Hennessy, Nickelback, Catherine O'Hara, Gordon Pinsent, and Ivan Reitman. Actor Eugene Levy, one of last year's inductees, will host a two-hour gala which will be broadcast Sunday evening on CTV.

Below is a list of Lloyd Robertson's television experience and career hightlights:

Honoured with the Canadian Association of New York's 2006 Arts and Letters Award, October 2006

Awarded the Order of Canada, February 1998

Inducted into the Canadian Association of Broadcasters Hall of Fame, 1998

Voted Most Trusted TV Journalist by the readers of TV Guide for a record 10 times; voted Best Anchor twice

Voted Canada's Favourite News Anchor in the first two annual TV Times Readers' Choice Awards, 1998 and 1999

Three-time Gemini winner as "Best Host, Anchor or Interviewer" in 1992, 1994 and 1997

1995/96 Canadian Association of Broadcasters' Gold Ribbon Award winner for Broadcast Excellence

Honoured in 1993 with the Radio Television News Directors' Association (RTNDA) President's Award

Voted Favourite TV Anchor in NOW Magazine's first Reader Poll

Recipient of the Toronto Sun's 1994 Reader's Voice Award for Favourite TV Anchor

Named Broadcaster of the Year in 1992 by the Central Canadian Broadcasters Association

Appointed Honorary Chair of the 1992 Terry Fox Run

1988 Gemini Award nominee for Best Coverage of a Special Event for Decision '88.

How to find a bargain at the Stratford Festival

2007-06-06T13:08:00.000-05:00

Tickets at Stratford are $50 to $124.20 Canadian, about $47 to $117 U.S., but you don't have to pay full price. Stratford offers a wide, sometimes confusing, variety of discounts.

If you order online at www.stratfordfestival.ca there are discounts of 20% to 50% on selected performances. There are lots of choices, but don't even think about getting an online discount to "Oklahoma!" in the middle of the summer.

Got kids? If you buy one regularly priced adult ticket, even one with the online discount (told you it was confusing) you may buy up to four tickets at $36 apiece for kids 18 and under who sit with you. It's called the Family Experience.

Are you a post-kid, age 18 to 29? You can buy tickets for $20 apiece online or in person within two weeks of the performance. It's called the Play On discount.

Are you a post post-kid, 30 to 35? You can save up to 50% online or in person within two weeks of the performance. It's called the Play Encore discount.

Feeling lucky at any age? Half-price rush tickets, if available, go on sale in person or by phone two hours before the performance.

Go to www.stratfordfestival.ca or call 800-567-1600 for information.

"We live in paradise" Food in Stratford

2007-06-06T12:51:00.001-05:00

Succulent Stratford
Wed, June 6, 2007
Eat, drink and be merry is more than a theatrical line for Stratford's fine cuisine emporiums.
By KATHY RUMLESKI
London Free Press

STRATFORD -- This city is a festival for the senses.

Long renowned for its theatre, this Perth County community also attracts international attention for its cuisine.

Hoping to promote it even more, the Stratford Tourism Alliance has recently launched its Sensuous Stratford website.

The site highlights all that Stratford has to offer in the way of palate pleasures.

"People know Stratford for the Stratford Festival . . . But in addition to that, there's a whole sensuality about a visit to Stratford that includes the food scene," says alliance marketing coordinator Cathy Rehberg.

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Restauranteur Eleanor Kane says Stratford "is becoming somewhat of a culinary capital in Canada."

Its chocolate is world-renowned, with orders coming from across North America, Europe and Australia. There are more gourmet chocolate shops, per capita, in Stratford than anywhere else in Ontario.

Great tea, great coffee, to-die-for desserts, these also are highlights of a trip to Stratford.

There are more than 100 restaurants in town and at this time of year, they're pretty much all hopping.

Last Monday was opening night of the Stratford Festival's 55th season, a time when some dining establishments prime for the theatre season.

The Old Prune on Albert St., Kane's restaurant, is one of them. Celebrating its 30th year, it works in tandem with the festival to make its patrons' trips to Stratford memorable.

"We consider our job as setting the stage . . . (for) people that want to combine a lovely meal with a great experience on the stages," Kane says.

That cuisine is prepared by seven chefs, some of whom have gone through the Stratford Chefs School, founded by Kane 25 years ago.

It is the only chef school in Canada operated by working restaurant professionals.

Guest instructors who have enhanced the experience for students include international chefs Riccardo Camanini, Paul Bertolli and Jean-Georges Vongerichten.

The Old Prune's chef de cuisine, Bryan Steele, spent time with Vongerichten at JoJo in New York.

Some of Kane's guests have told her they're not sure what is the biggest draw -- the restaurants or the theatre.

The Old Prune dining area includes a courtyard where patrons can eat their dessert -- Tasting of Rhubarb is particularly noted -- or mingle near the bubbling pond. The centrepiece is a century-old Manitoba maple tree that is magnificently stately.

The architecturally exquisite Church Restaurant, which was a church until 1975, remains the place to go if you have time for only one dining experience in Stratford.

Its reputation has drawn such stars as Christopher Plummer, Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward and Bill Hutt.

Plummer prefers a seat in the upstairs Belfry, which has a stunning view of the main section of the restaurant with its stained glass windows, hues of brown, orange and yellow and old-time organ pipes.

Plummer is known to sit at a table with his back against the wall so nobody can approach him from behind.

Owner Mark Craft started his career at the restaurant as bus boy and purchased it in 1988.

He says he hires the best people to work at The Church.

That includes executive chef Amede Lamarche, one reason the crowds worship the food at The Church, which has been reviewed in newspapers around the globe.

Lamarche puts a lot of effort into his menus, which change every five to six weeks.

"You can't really fall out of favour (or flavour) when you're always changing."

Karen Hartwick believes that your senses awaken when you visit her Tea Leaves Tea Tasting Bar, set in an 1888 home, which also includes a B&B.

With more than 100 high-end teas to choose from, Tea Leaves is a spot to taste and learn and Hartwick is only too happy to share her knowledge as Canada's top tea sommelier.

Trained by some of China's tea masters, Hartwick says tea is as complex as wine.

Hartwick, who grew up in London, offers tasting before purchasing. Some of her teas include Jasmine Dragon Tears, High Mountain Dark Roast and Golden Monkey, which was around 5,000 years ago.

"The tea tasting includes smelling different teas and studying the scent and leaves," she says.

This year in honour of Richard Monette's final season as the festival's artistic director, Hartwick is offering Monette Supreme, a high-quality Earl Gray.

Hartwick is versed in tea's health benefits.

All teas have antioxidants. While green teas have cancer-fighting properties, Hartwick says blacks are beneficial because they fight infections.

Hartwick says her interest in tea started when she was young and would hold "tea parties" with her grandmother after going to the downtown London market and getting scones from a bakery.

"We had such good, nurturing talks, just Grandma and myself. With tea, we can create a ritual for ourselves. That's another thing in our North American society that we're lacking."

Great experiences from her childhood also prompted Kristine Steed to purchase Rheo Thompson Candies five years ago.

In its 38th year, it's the oldest candy company in the city, and known particularly for its fabulous mint smoothies chocolate.

"What I remember (as a child) is the aroma and the mint smoothie. We used to walk to school and go and pick up a smoothie bar and inhale it," Steed recalls.

Mint is still the predominant scent as you walk into the 144 square-metre store.

Rheo Thompson products -- more than 100, including a new bark made with ground Kenyan coffee beans and Heart Smart Bark with cranberries and almonds -- are hand-made on site by 18 staff, 25 in the peak season.

At this time of year, eating outdoors should be encouraged. So grab some chocolate and a double-fisted sandwich from York Street Kitchen -- which will provide you with a perfect picnic lunch and has a takeout window -- find a spot along the Avon river or near the gardens and relax.

Don't forget to smell the flowers in the gardens -- some 80,000 annuals. Stratford was a 2006 Communities in Bloom winner.

"We live in paradise," Susie Palach, owner of the York Street Kitchen, says of Stratford. "We do have it all."

---

STRATFORD INFO

- www.welcometostratford.com

- www.sensuousstratford.com

- www.city.stratford.on.ca

- 1-800-561-7926

ON THE MENU

- The Othello, local goat cheese, roasted sweet red peppers, black olives, lettuce and pesto on sourdough at York Street Kitchen, $6.25

- Grilled squab with a black bean tamale on roasted poblano sauce, includes choice of appetizer, dessert, coffee and petits fours at The Old Prune, $70.50

- Taste of rhubarb: sparkling rhubarb bellini, creamy rhubarb gelato, warm rhubarb crostato at The Old Prune, $12

- Scallop, orange, saffron, licorice off post-modern menu at The Church, $110

- Milk and dark mint smoothies at Rheo Thompson Candies, $14.75

- Flowering tea in wine glass at Tea Leaves Tea Tasting Bar, $9.50

Oklhoma Oh Perfect

2007-06-04T11:03:00.000-05:00

Song, dance classics thrill in Stratford's 'Oklahoma!'

May 31, 2007

BY MARTIN F. KOHN

FREE PRESS THEATER CRITIC

STRATFORD, Ontario -- Ten minutes into Donna Feore's (or anyone else's) production of "Oklahoma!" we've already heard two certified classics, "Oh, What a Beautiful Mornin' " and "The Surrey With the Fringe on Top."

After 25 minutes we've heard two more, "Kansas City" and "I Cain't Say No" and a little while later another two: "Many a New Day" and "People Will Say We're in Love."

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That makes an even half-dozen great moments in musical theater before the first hour is up. No wonder Rodgers and Hammerstein wanted to slap an exclamation point on their show's title.

There'll be a couple more before Act One concludes and then Feore the choreographer adds a couple exclamation points of her own, allowing dance to carry the show forward, as original choreographer Agnes de Mille did in 1943.

All that singing and dancing leaves little room for narrative or building characters, which may be just as well. As a story, "Oklahoma!" shows its age and, like the song says, the corn is as high as an elephant's eye.

There's the lead couple, Curly and Laurey (Dan Chameroy and Blythe Wilson) who are crazy in love but pretend not to be, especially Laurey.

There's the funny second couple, Will Parker and Ado Annie, whose road to true love faces its own impediment: Ado Annie, the girl who cain't say no, is a bit indiscriminate with her affections.

No wonder the show-stealing Lindsay Thomas, who plays her, looks like the happiest person in the Festival Theatre. That includes the 30 cast members and all 1,826 in the audience when the house is full.

Kyle Blair plays Will Parker with matching effervescence, and does rope tricks besides.

Nora McLellan as genial Aunt Eller, Jonathan Ellul as comic itinerant peddler Ali Hakim and David W. Keeley as farmhand Jud Fry deliver enriching performances.

Chameroy and Wilson sing powerfully. Unlike the movie, where separate dancers performed, Feore has her actors dance Laurey's fantasy of what the future holds, the "Dream Ballet," reasoning that the audience has become attached to them.

Indeed, we have.

Othello, Uncomplicated set, some what unsatisfying.

2007-06-04T10:54:00.000-05:00

The what but not the why of the evil in men's hearts

MICHAEL POSNER

June 4, 2007

OTHELLO
By William Shakespeare
Directed by David Latham
Starring Philip Akin and Jonathan Goad
Rating: ** 1⁄2

Until Sept. 22 at the Tom Patterson Theatre

Two oak boxes, a few swords, a marriage bed, an embroidered handkerchief: These are among the few props and settings used in David Latham's clean, clear, uncomplicated but not entirely satisfying production of Othello, which opened at the Stratford Festival Saturday afternoon. The show stars Philip Akin, the first African-Canadian to assay the title role, and Jonathan Goad as the Machiavellian Iago, who orchestrates the Moor's destruction.

The setting and story are of course familiar. The noble Othello is a 16th-century war hero, defending the interests of Venice - for centuries the dominant military and trading power in the Mediterranean - against the expansionist Turks. His epic stories of the battlefield seduce the fair Desdemona (Claire Jullien), who manages to escape the clutches of her possessive father, Brabantio (Stephen Russell), and marry him. When the general is summoned to fight another battle with the Turks, besieging the Venetian colony in Cyprus, she follows.

Meanwhile, Iago, a high-ranking officer, is ostensibly offended by the promotion of a rival, Michael Cassio (Jeffrey Wetsch) and decides to plot revenge. By subtle means, he manages to persuade Othello that Desdemona has been guilty of adultery with Cassio - a suggestion that ultimately provokes the Moor to murder his wife, and to commit suicide.

Part of the continuing fascination with the play is that Iago's genuine motivation is ambiguous. The Cassio element is certainly there, but there are also hints in the text that he suspects Othello of sleeping with Emilia, his own wife; other hints that he is secretly in love with Desdemona himself, and still others that imply a reflexive racism. In his soliloquies, Iago spends a fair bit of time ruminating on how he intends to stage-manage Othello's downfall, making the audience complicit in his evil, but he is remarkably taciturn about motive, no more so than when the doomed Moor demands an explanation and, by the master craftsman of rhetoric is told, "From this day forth I will never speak word."

In a production as spartan as this, virtually everything rests on the power and credibility of the actors. As Othello, Akin works mightily hard to project both the Moor's essential nobility and the madness of the green-eyed monster, jealousy, that finally consumes him.

But too often I felt he was reciting lines rather than acting them. He delivered them in two distinct declamatory styles - one in a kind of staccato interruptus, with a pause between each emphasized word, and the second in a raging torrent of verbiage, the lines spilling over each other. This approach grew tiresome after a while and leant nothing to the ostensible, indeed the essential, goal of believability.

In Akin's defense, it must be said that Othello was and remains one of the most demanding roles in English theatre - requiring a huge leap from brilliant general and dedicated lover and husband to a man easily misled into jealous madness and murder by mere and unproven suggestion. Somehow, the actor has to make that transition plausible and I don't think Akin, labour though he does, quite gets there.

Goad, among the finest of the young Stratford players, offers us Iago in a striking and novel minor key. Cunning and determined, he is casual, almost flip with many of his lines, delivering them in a conversational style, almost at times throwing them away. In fact, with his back inevitably turned to half the Tom Patterson Theatre audience, they were often inaudible.

Claire Jullien plays Desdemona with a ton of heart, young but sincere in her love and understandably confused and distraught about the slanderous accusations made against her. (One picayune aside: the bed on which she dies, ostensibly her marriage bed, is too small; Desdemona's toes stick out over the edge under the sheet.)

I liked Stephen Russell's Brabantio, the outraged father, but he disappears from the text early in Act One and never returns. The only major actor whom I thought completely nailed the part - spoke with utter clarity and conviction, indeed commanded the stage when she was on it - was Lucy Peacock as Emilia, the wife who too late fathoms her husband's nefarious intent.

Kudos to John Stead for some well-staged sword fights, to Michael J. Whitfield for a cohesive lighting design that underscored the play's currents of darkness, and composer Peter Hannan for a haunting religious score that framed the action.

But over all, I found Latham's Othello to be an uneven production, compelling at times, but not able to extract and deliver the full, cathartic emotional power contained in Shakespeare's text.

Low-key tragedy built around star

By Richard Ouzounian
Toronto Star
Theatre Critic
OTHELLO
(3 out of 4)

By William Shakespeare. Directed by David Latham. Until Sept. 22 at the Tom Patterson Theatre. 1-800-567-1600

STRATFORD–Sometimes the man and the moment come together.

On Saturday afternoon, Philip Akin became the first black Canadian to play the role of Othello at the Stratford Festival. A historic occasion, marked by a solid and emotionally honest production of Shakespeare's tragedy.

One can lament the fact that it took 55 seasons to get to this point and that Akin's predecessors in the part included two African-Americans and three actors in blackface, including an Israeli performer whose cry of "Vife? I haff no vife," still echoes through the halls of infamy here.

But that's the past and what's visible today on the stage of the Tom Patterson Theatre for all to see is a clean and clear look at Othello with an all-Canadian cast.

Director David Latham has imposed no artificial period or interpretation on the script: He simply puts it up there with a solid cast of actors to do it justice. We follow rapt as the malignant Iago stirs his master Othello into a frenzy of jealousy that destroys the lives of a half-dozen people.

The end result is an often gripping piece of theatre which is only lacking one thing: the poetic grandeur that is part of Othello's magic. It holds you, it moves you, but it never reaches the stratosphere.

There are times you feel you could be watching a new TV show called CSI: Cyprus, written in blank verse. But that quibble aside, you will find much to cherish here.

Akin is a lean, saturnine Othello with a battle-scarred countenance that makes him slightly forbidding. You believe him both as a warrior and as a man who adores his newfound wife Desdemona with a great passion.

Where he falls down is as the poetic spinner of tales whose verbal felicity is enough to charm politicians and make women fall in love with him. Akin has every quality Othello needs except that grand sweeping voice that men like James Earl Jones have used in the role.

But Latham seems to have sensed this and built his whole production around Akin. Nobody else rants or raves, but they all speak with crystal clarity and a total sense of what their lines mean.

This method lets Jonathan Goad offer us a marvellously low-key Iago, a pure sociopath in action. Instead of sneering his venomous asides to the audience, he barely whispers them and the result is twice as chilling.

I defy you to take your eyes off Goad when he's on stage, and what makes his supremacy even more effective is that he's usually doing nothing but thinking and plotting. But what is more thrilling than seeing thought in action?

There's a warm, sincere Desdemona from Claire Jullien who escapes being the simpering victim we often encounter and Lucy Peacock is calmly restrained as Emilia, with sadness behind her eyes letting one suspect she knew what her husband Iago was capable of all along.

A solid, dashing Cassio from Jeffrey Wetsch and a believable Roderigo from Gordon S. Miller fill things out nicely, as do the simple but appropriate costumes of Carolyn M. Smith.

This Othello doesn't scale the ultimate heights of tragedy that the play demands, but it brings us further up the slopes than any production I've seen in recent years.

For that, a sincere thank you to David Latham, Jonathan Goad and – it goes without saying – Philip Akin.

My One and Only, All show and all go.

2007-06-04T10:39:00.000-05:00

Plot? Who cares? 'My One and Only' dazzles

June 2, 2007

BY MARTIN F. KOHN

FREE PRESS THEATER CRITIC

STRATFORD, Ont. -- It may be a cultural treasure with a six- month season and a multimillion dollar budget but underneath it all the Stratford Festival is a summer stock repertory company. Stick around long enough and you’ll see the same actor in two or three parts.

That’s one of the joys of Stratford and nowhere is it more pleasurable than in “My One and Only,” the reconstituted Gershwin musical. Here is pathologically reclusive Boo Radley from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” tap dancing to beat the band (and getting the girl, to boot).

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There is malevolent loner Jud Fry from “Oklahoma” with a phony moustache and phonier Russian accent as the impresario of an aquacade.

Sharing the stage with them is junkyard dog of a woman Mayella Ewell from “To Kill a Mockingbird,” only this time she’s an airplane mechanic with a Brooklyn accent.

These actors -- Laird Mackintosh, David W. Keeley and Dayna Tekatch, respectively -- join Cynthia Dale (in her only role this season) and a host of other singing, dancing actors in a cheery amalgam of songs by George and Ira Gershwin, marvelous tap dancing and a story that’s lighter than air.

Air is apt. The time is 1927 and Mackintosh plays an aviator hoping to be the first person to fly solo from New York to Paris. Dale plays the star diver of the aquacade -- a water ballet -- an actual form of entertainment in those days.

He is smitten with her and she with him but the dastardly producer of the aquacade (Keeley) is blackmailing her to keep her from leaving. Seems he has feelthy pictures of her that would ruin her reputation. (We know, but remember it’s 1927.)

That’s about it for plot. Forget about it and listen to such songs as “‘Swonderful,” “He Loves and She Loves,” “I Can’t Be Bothered Now,” “Strike Up the Band” and “Nice Work If You Can Get It.”

Listen, and watch, the extraordinary tap dancing. Everybody gets into the act and everybody’s very good. Special pats on the back to the three song-and-dance men --Kyle Blair, Ray Hogg and Julius Sermonia -- who sing, scat, tap and even roller skate harmoniously.

Mark Cassius, as a suave barber, has a stellar tap number with Mackintosh.

The show is pure fluff. Nothing inherently wrong with that but a steady diet of candy becomes tiresome.

But why complain? The ensemble numbers are splendid. A standout among standouts is the very convincing simulation of an underwater ballet performed in black light.

You could just go to see David Boechler’s colorful panoply of costumes, or Douglas Paraschuk’s dazzling sets, complete with airplane, locomotive, sea and skyline.

Director-choreographer Michael Lichtefeld is a master confectioner and he has an able ally in musical director Berthold Carriere, one of Stratford’s jewels.

Speaking of jewels, the female chorus’s pre-show admonition about cell phones and candy wrappers should be videotaped and distributed to theaters everywhere.

MICHAEL POSNER

June 2, 2007

My One and Only

Directed and choreographed

by Michael Lichtefeld

Music by George Gershwin,

The Globe and Mail

lyrics by Ira Gershwin

Book by Peter Stone

and Timothy S. Mayer

Starring Cynthia Dale

and Laird Mackintosh

At the Avon Theatre in Stratford, Ont., until Oct. 28 (800-567-1600)

***1⁄2

The Stratford Festival is off to one of its strongest starts in years.

Brian Bedford has served up a riveting and tortured King Lear. Donna Feore's production of Oklahoma! deserves to be ranked with the best of them. Susan H. Schulman has coaxed solid performances from three child actors and a strong adult cast in To Kill a Mockingbird. And now, director and choreographer Michael Lichtefeld has delivered a relentlessly clever and playful staging of My One and Only - a collection of hummable tunes by the late Gershwin brothers, George and Ira, wrapped in a lighthearted fantasy of a script.

The show had a successful run on Broadway for two years in the mid-1980s, featuring choreography by Tommy Tune, who also co-starred with the former model Twiggy.

There's not an ounce of substance to the story, a 1927 romance involving fictional aviator Billy Buck Chandler (Laird Mackintosh) and English Channel swimmer and revue star Edythe Herbert (Cynthia Dale). Billy aims to be the first man to fly solo from New York to Paris, but his plans are placed in jeopardy once he spots the dazzling Herbert.

Of course, he's just a hayseed from Texas and needs lessons in courtship, courtesy of one dapper tonsorial and sartorial expert, Mr. Magix (rendered with coy sophistication by Mark Cassius). The problem is that Edythe is under the strict thumb of the revue's impresario, Georgian Prince Nicolai Erraclyovitch Tchatchavadze (David Keeley). Nici is determined to derail any possible tryst, as is Billy's ace mechanic (Dayna Tekatch), a fast-talking Brooklyn babe named Mickey, who doesn't want his hormones to spoil the flyer's shot at the cover of Time. Even Billy himself has misgivings, when he learns that Edythe's track record includes more than swimming competitions.

I don't think I'm exactly ruining the suspense by saying that true love wins the day.

But never mind the story, a gossamer kiss to build a dream on. My One and Only is essentially a dance-and-music show, rendered with endlessly creative costumes (by David Boechler), some flawless tap-dancing routines (this is not Fosse country), stellar performances, and a series of inventive sets (by Douglas Paraschuk). Among them: a Staten Island beach (on which Billy and Edythe frolic in the sand, singing and playfully kicking water at each other) and a pool (done with a simple scrim, pulleys and the tricks of Kevin Fraser's lighting design) in which the women of Prince Nici's revue appear to swim and do gymnastic vaults and somersaults.

Dressed in a stunning array of colourful silk and satin, Cynthia Dale has never been in finer voice. The role offers no serious challenge to her acting chops - a pout here, a flirtatious glance there, a few tears. But she dances like a pro and delivers Gershwin with style and obvious affection.

At least vocally, Mackintosh started slowly, but found his form with the Act 1 finale, Strike Up the Band. He grew stronger after that, and danced with flair and confidence. Keeley seemed to stumble occasionally with Prince Nici's Russian accent, but otherwise handled the poseur role with humour and genuine aplomb. Tekatch (who also served as assistant choreographer) not only fixes sparkplugs; she is one. And making his Stratford debut, Marcus Nance, as the Rt. Rev. J.D. Montgomery, showed real comic and vocal gifts.

Package all of this tap-dancing tapioca around the kind of melodies they don't, alas, write any more - Funny Face, Nice Work If You Can Get It, 'S Wonderful, How Long Has This Been Going On?, He Loves and She Loves - and you have an evening's entertainment of the first order.

A bit of frothy summer fun

Jun 01, 2007 05:38 AM
Richard Ouzounian
Toronto Star
Theatre Critic

My One and Only
(3 out of 4)

Music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, book by Peter Stone and Timothy S. Mayer. Directed and choreographed by Michael Lichtefeld. Until Oct. 28 at the Avon Theatre.

I guarantee you two things about My One and Only, the brightly coloured, empty-headed bauble of a musical that opened at the Avon Theatre last night: you’ll enjoy it while you watch and you’ll probably forget most of what you saw by the time you hit the parking lot.

Back in 1983, Broadway director Tommy Tune assembled a vehicle for himself and Twiggy, the British model who briefly morphed into a musical star. He took a lot of Gershwin songs and contrived a tale about a female aquatic star and a daredevil male pilot who fall in love.

It was in big trouble on the road, but it finally opened to a decent run of two years, largely on the strength of the stars’ personalities.

Since then, it’s never had a major revival and as you watch, you’ll soon realize why. The same thing Gertrude Stein said about Oakland, Calif., is true of My One and Only: there’s no there, there.

We don’t really care about Edythe, our swimmer, and Billy, our aviator: they’re chess pieces moved around the board for our entertainment.

Yes, you get a lot of wonderful Gershwin songs, but most are simply stuck into the action, jukebox style.

However, having said all that, it must be noted that director-choreographer Michael Lichtefeld and his team have made the most of what they’ve been given.

The fun starts with Douglas Paraschuk’s set, inspired by the bright geometric patterns of Piet Mondrian. David Boechler dives into the 1927 period and comes up with brightly hued outfits that simply pop off the stage, thanks to Kevin Fraser’s clean, sharp lighting. And Berthold Carrière makes sure all those Gershwin tunes sound as luscious as we’d want them to.

Everything’s ready for Lichtefeld to take over and he does, with fast-moving, visually inventive staging.

His choreography is bright and energetic, but it’s virtually all tap-dancing. That’s not his fault; it’s how the show was written. But no matter how well it’s done, you eventually tire of tapping and that happens here. Lichtefeld must sense that, because the props get wilder as the evening goes on, compensating for the sameness of the steps.

While it’s a shame to see Cynthia Dale in a role that uses so little of her acting skill, it’s undeniable that she looks delish in the costumes, dances with flair and makes magic with songs like “How Long Has this Been Going On?” As her fly boy buddy, Laird Mackintosh flashes his Jimmy Stewart grin, taps with dogged earnestness and brings the Act I curtain down nicely with a full-voiced “Strike Up the Band.”

David Keeley has fun as a bogus Russian prince and Dayna Tekatch is a cheeky charmer of a flight mechanic. The rest of the company dance with distinction and smile unceasingly.

Is this the kind of show the Stratford Festival ought to be doing? That may be open for debate, but you’ll get no argument from me as to how well they’re doing it here.

My One and Only is a real summer romance of a musical: frothy and fun, with no strings attached. If that’s what you’re looking for, you’ll like it a lot.