Saturday, October 25, 2014

Winding down the Shaw and Stratford Festivals for another season

On a Saturday evening, some news and notes as our two major theatre festivals in Ontario wind down for another season, but first, a thank you to readers for comments I have received for my posts recently.

I love writing this blog every week and sometimes more often than that.  It all depends on what's on my mind, actually.  If you are a faithful reader of this space, you know my thoughts run the gamut from civic affairs to the arts to fashion to...well just about anything, really.  But having said that, I find sometimes the brain power just isn't there in order to produce the quality content I like to present week in and week out.  So if I miss an occasional week, please forgive me, and check back soon for another post.

I love receiving comments on my posts, either in the comments section of my blog or through my Twitter and Facebook postings of the blog, so feel free to send your comments - good, bad or indifferent - to me at any time.  I read them all and am always grateful for the feedback.

Recent posts that have garnered comments from you include my posting on the 9th Annual Walk a Mile in HER Shoes for Gillian's Place down at The Pen in St. Catharines.  By way of an update on that, I doubled my total pledges raised from last year for which I am extremely grateful to all of you for your support.  More importantly, all of the men who participated in the walk last Saturday collectively raised $88,000 for Gillian's Place, and that is great news.

My choice of shoes, incidentally, were a dressy little set of wedge heals with small bows and a chisel toe which proved quite comfortable, actually.  Quite stylish too, as my far better half said she'd wear them if they were her size!  That made me stop and ponder the gravity of that comment for a moment, by the way.

My most recent post from last weekend on people dropping the ball on presenting themselves in public in a professional way garnered comments too.  I didn't know if anyone else would share my concerns society as a whole is starting to look, well, sloppy these days but apparently I struck a chord with some readers and that's great.

The funny thing is after I ranted last weekend, I pulled out a pair of trusty Kenneth Cole shoes from my closet I often wear with casual outfits and found the upper and sole were starting to separate on one and the heel was falling apart on the other, so the irony of the situation was not lost on me personally this week.

Today I remedied the situation by visiting Kristine at The Boot Shop in downtown St. Catharines (great store with a great staff) and came away with a nice new pair of black Blundstone chisel-toe boots from Tasmania.  They will take some getting used to, but they are a classic and apparently last forever, so that's what I am looking for.

Okay, now on to a couple of notes on the arts this weekend that bear mentioning, as both the Shaw Festival and Stratford Festival wind down their respective seasons this weekend.  It hardly seems possible the openings in the spring are but a distant memory now, but the time has come to drop the final curtain on both Festivals and look towards the next season.

The final performances of the season at Shaw are tomorrow afternoon, as the dark and rather sinister take on Kander & Ebb's musical Cabaret wraps up at the Festival Theatre, and J.B. Priestley's comedy When We Are Married concludes at the Royal George Theatre.  I saw the Priestley play this summer and it is quite a lot of fun, but rather dated frankly.  As long as you head in knowing the era of the play, you'll be just fine.

I didn't get to see Cabaret, unfortunately, but most reports are favourable I have found.  It might not be everyone's cup of tea for a musical, but the Shaw Festival is used to taking risks and this might have been a rather big one that seems to have paid off handsomely for them this season.

If you want tickets to either performance tomorrow, call the Shaw box office at 1-800-511-7429 or go to www.shawfest.com.

Over at the Stratford Festival, their season wrapped up this evening with the final performance at the Festival Theatre of their marquee show, Shakespeare's King Lear starring Colm Feore in the title role.  By all accounts it was a magical performance surrounded by a very strong cast, and again, I am sorry I missed it.

The new reality of my employment situation and working right through the summer this year prevented me from getting down to Stratford as I do most years, so this will be an off year for me.  Hopefully that will change next season, but we'll have to see in the spring.

There was some sad news out of Stratford this week, though, involving the passing of one of their long-time cast members.  Bernard Hopkins, a 24-year veteran of the Festival and an actor whose career spanned half a century passed away on Wednesday of this week.

Bernard was a great comic actor to be sure, but he also provided some memorable moments in many of Shakespeare's greatest plays, including Friar Laurence in the 1992 production of Romeo & Juliet and Gonzalo in the 2005 production of The Tempest.  Hopkins also appeared as Robert Cecil in Timothy Findley's Elizabeth Rex, which received its stage premiere at Stratford in 2000 and was later filmed, again with Hopkins in the cast.

All of those productions and many more I had the pleasure of seeing over the years at Stratford, and I always admired his work as an actor.  I found some of his directing projects to be a little off the mark, but even they had memorable moments to savour.

Bernard Hopkins was born in Liverpool, England in 1937 and made his Stratford debut in The Two Gentlemen of Verona in 1975.  I understand he retired from the company only within the last few years.

It is always sad to say goodbye to a person you may never have known personally, yet felt you somehow knew through their work on stage over the years.  Hopkins was about as comfortable as a pair of old shoes on stage, and a welcome addition to any cast anywhere he appeared.  He will be sadly missed.

Have a great weekend!

October 25th, 2014.

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