My mid-week blog is a day late this week thanks to the brutal weather we have been experiencing, so my apologies off the top for that. Without air conditioning, my office is over 90F right now, which somehow sounds worse on the old scale. So before I melt, let's take a look at a couple more shows at the Stratford Festival this season.
One of the two big musicals at Stratford this season is Fiddler on the Roof, with book by Joseph Stein, inspired by a collection of short stories by Sholem Aleichem, and featuring music by Jerry Bock and lyrics by Sheldon Harnick. It plays at the Festival Theatre until October 20th.
While I personally thought the other musical this season, The Who's Tommy was a bit of a disappointment for me at least, due in no small part to the over-reliance on special effects to wow the audience, Fiddler wows them the old-fashioned way: with great music and a story with lots of depth to it. Where Tommy is a theatrical tour-de-force helping to usher in a new era of mega-musicals with a more contemporary slant, Fiddler on the Roof harkens back to the golden age of melodic musicals that were, sadly, slowly in decline not long after this show debuted in 1964.
Donna Feore is the director and choreographer for this new iteration of Fiddler, and although I have found her to be rather hit and miss at times, this time she hits the bullseye in a big way, with lots of exhuberant dancing, singing and all-round music-making. The young cast, many of whom also appear in Tommy, literally fill the Festival Theatre stage with a high-energy show of a different sort.
The set and costume design, by Allen Moyer and Dana Osborne respectively, remain true to the original idea of the show, with the opening scene depicting a fiddler on the roof rather cleverly done with the use of small houses on which a full-size female fiddler (Anna Atkinson) performs the familiar opening musical sequence.
The cast is headed up by dependable workhorse Scott Wentworth as Tevye, who along with his wife Golde, played by Kate Hennig, deal with the challenges of a new world order as far as marrying off their daughters is concerned. Wentworth and Hennig earn our respect and appreciation for excellent performances in a top-notch ensemble. In fact, the only weak point I could see from my vantage point was the fact some of their daughters seemed a little bland, but perhaps it just seems so when next to the commanding presence of Wentworth and Hennig.
Elsewhere in the cast, good performances are also offered by Andre Morin as Motel, the tailor; Steve Ross as Lazar Wolf and Barbara Fulton as Grandma Tzeitel. Special mention goes out to Niagara's own Lee Siegel, who shows he can command the stage in his own right with a commanding performance as the "To Life" Tenor.
Feore instills a great deal of heart into this production, making it one of the better musicals I've seen at Stratford over the years. Better than Tommy? No, not really; just different. Both are excellent in their own right; it is just as a traditionalist I find this has more depth of character to it than Tommy does. You may feel differently, of course, but I'm an old fuddy-duddy and I readily admit it!
Fiddler on the Roof rates a very strong 4 out of 4 stars and continues at the Festival Theatre until October 20th.
From the hit to the miss at Stratford this season, Peter Raby's adaptation of Alexandre Dumas' novel, The Three Muskateers. This is the so-called family show this season, and true to form lots of children were in attendance a couple of weeks ago when I attended a performance at the Festival Theatre. Directed by Miles Potter, the show has its moments as great family entertainment, but overall it comes off rather flat, I found. I remember the last production of this show by former Stratford Artistic Director Richard Monette, I believe, over ten years ago was the benchmark production.
It's not that this is really a bad show, per se, but it does suffer in comparison to the last production of Raby's musical at Stratford. It just seems so long and drawn out, I can't imagine all the kids in the audience this season staying focused on the show for the better part of three hours. When you think about it, attention spans have been greatly affected in the last few years due to technology that simply didn't exist barely a decade earlier.
The other aspect of the show I find surprising in this day and age is a refreshing lack of too many computer-generated special effects. What's there works fine and that seems more than enough, really. That being said, the show suffers somewhat as being nice, but not particularly exceptional.
The opening scene promises more than the show ultimately delivers, with Luke Humprey's D'Artagnan in a flashy sword fight with the elder D'Artagnan, played by Stratford stalwart Wayne Best. But when they finish, we find ourselves wanting for almost three hours.
As for the cast, Luke Humphrey is a likeable D'Artagnan, the young man determined to crack the lineup as it were and join the other "Three Inseparables", played by Jonathan Goad, Mike Shara and Graham Abbey. Goad and Abbey are still heartthrobs to many a young woman; Shara seems a bit restrained as he follows his religious beliefs in the second act.
One of the standout performances comes from always reliable Steven Sutcliffe as Cardinal Richelieu, certainly a powerful figure in the outcome of the action. Also good is Keith Dinicol as Louis XIII, the King of France, and Deborah Hay as the Cardinal's agent, Milady de Winter.
As mentioned, this Three Musketeers, while having many points of merit, pales in comparison to earlier productions at Stratford, and just seems to be a fair-to-middling show this season. It rates 2 out of 4 stars and continues at the Festival Theatre until October 19th.
Enjoy the theatre!
July 18th, 2013.
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