At the Stratford Festival, a back-flipping Annie…
When I arrived at the Stratford Festival in Ontario this 12 months, there was snow on the ground and wreaths on the doorways.
In late September.
But it wasn’t because of untimely Canadian frost and exuberant vacation cheer. No, a Christmas film was being filmed in the beautiful city that boasts distinctive Shakespeare stagings, fashionable performs and musicals about 90 minutes from Toronto.
“Merry Christmas!,” a restaurant server greeted me with. Oh, Canada.
Harper Rae Asch stars at the title orphan with a coronary heart of gold in “Annie” at the Stratford Festival. Ann Baggley
During this unusually long season at the 72-year-old theatrical establishment, though, audiences will doubtless witness some precise flurries finally.
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The venerable pageant’s revival of “Annie” performs nicely into December — one of spring-and-summer Stratford’s longest runs ever. So the solar will come out tomorrow, albeit for fewer hours.
Directed by Donna Feore, Stratford’s queen of musicals, the jaunty manufacturing that runs until Dec. 14 finds a successful steadiness of nostalgia and novelty.
Today’s children continue to have a hankering for go-get-em Annie (a guileless Harper Rae Asch) and her hard-knock life, but they’ve no clue it ever was a cartoon. Or, for that matter, what a cartoon even is. Every revival has to contend with the fact that the rags-to-riches plot, more outlandish by the 12 months, is foundationally two-dimensional.
Feore’s likable model neatly straddles a snug center ground.
The often cartoony costumes and wigs are more real looking and worn-out; less cherry Starburst.
Yet it’s importantly not as glum as some latest revivals of Charles Strouse, Thomas Meehan and Martin Charnin’s show have been. How can it’s? With Macy’s Parade-balloon-sized characters like the evil Miss Hannigan — performed with last-call bitterness by Laura Condlin — Daddy Warbucks (grasp of disguise, Dan Chameroy) and a deus ex machina in the type of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, you possibly can’t very nicely deal with healthful “Annie” prefer it’s “Anna Karenina.”
It’s such as you’ve stumbled into a gymnastics meet — with singing. David Hou
Feore, who confirmed in the pageant’s “Billy Elliot” and “The Sound of Music” that she’s a wiz with children, cranks up the spirit with a sensational ensemble of younger actors as the orphans. It’s such as you’ve stumbled into a gymnastics meet with singing — Backflips: The Musical! The women are all budding comedians, too.
There is, of course, a risk in performing “Annie” on Stratford’s thrust Festival Theatre stage. Dog lovers, dangerously close to the motion, will need to run up and steal the lovable, shaggy pups who play stray Sandy.
A 15-minute stroll away, there are another couple of canines in “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels,” the deliriously humorous musical comedy enjoying at the Avon Theatre through Nov. 23.
Only they’re human: Lawrence Jameson and Freddy Benson, the sleazy dueling con artists who have been performed in the film by Michael Caine and Steve Martin.
Lawrence is a snaky Brit in a sensible go well with worn by the cracking actor Jonathan Goad, who’s a professional at being both dapper and shady. And Freddy is the boyish younger upstart invading his turf. They’re making an attempt to trick the same girl in the south of France.
Stratford’s revival of “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels” is a hilarious musical comedy. David Hou
Freddy is normally performed by Liam Tobin, but I noticed his understudy Henry Firmston. I’d watched the actor once before in the pageant’s “Something Rotten” (returning next 12 months) last season. His distinctive, puckish vitality — more rerun of “Friends” than “step, kick, kick, leap, kick, touch” — actually punches up every show he’s a half of.
Hysterical toe-tappers from composer David Yazbek, such as “Great Big Stuff” and “Ruprect,” made my abs really feel like they’d just been put through sit-ups.
The musicals offered in the proscenium Avon have visually gone a step down in latest years. That’s still true of “Dirty Rotten,” directed by Tracey Flye. The surroundings is basic and a little flat. When it comes to stomach laughs, however: great big stuff.
Liam Tobin and Jonathan Goad star as Freddy and Lawrence in “Rotten.” David Hou
This season, the spectacle in that theater has instead been handed to power-hungry, stab-happy Mr. “Macbeth.”
In Robert Lepage’s gas-giant model of Shakespeare’s tragedy, on through Nov. 22, you’ll get eye of newt and toe of frog, Motel Six and gangs on hogs.
Yes, the director — whose work New York audiences will know from the Met’s “Ring Cycle” in 2010 — has turned Mackers, Lady M, Banquo and the relaxation into grungy bikers. Hells MacAngels.
Aesthetically, it’s as thrilling as any play you’ll see on Broadway. Lately, fairly a bit more so. A large freeway motel rotates with devious mischief — bloody murders, disrobing — taking place in a number of rooms. Motorcycles roll across the stage. And two-way mirrors are used to spooky impact.
As far as the energy constructions and ground guidelines of the warring factions go, however, one thing baffling this manner comes.
Robert Lepage has reimagined “Macbeth” as a biker-gang tragedy. David Hou
“Macbeth” is always a difficult tragedy. Ambition, witchcraft and defiance of the natural order (killing a king) are all fused into one very sophisticated dude. Leather jackets and doo-rags blur the state of affairs more than contribute something substantive. And the idea of the witches feels notably unserious.
Lepage’s aptitude for reinvention labored far better when he moved the motion of “Corilanus” to a recognizable Washington DC a few years back. The “House of Cards” political-thriller temper gave audiences a manner into that play that “Macbeth” doesn’t particularly shout out for.
That said: As far as Macbeths and Lady Macbeths go, you possibly can’t do a lot better than Tom McCamus, with the voice of a midnight radio host and the scowl of a brutal killer, and Lucy Peacock, whose electrified Lady M takes explicit delight in destruction.
Maybe even more formidable than that climbing couple was one of the hotter tickets I noticed — “Forgiveness,” an emotional and expansive new play at the Tom Patterson Theatre about the plight of Japanese-Canadians during World War II that covers 4 a long time.
The set consists of a giant spinning motel, and bikes are pushed across the stage. David Hou
It begins in 1968, with Mitsue’s son bringing home his girlfriend’s mom Phyllis (Jacklyn Francis) and father, Ralph, for dinner. The normal issues about sweethearts’ people assembly for the first time — what to make, what to put on — are compounded by the ‘rents’ traumatic histories, which painfully unfold as we rewind to the Thirties.
Mitsue (Yoshie Bancroft, empathic and fantastic) and her household expertise racism in Vancouver and finally are put in an internment camp after the assault on Pearl Harbor. At the same time, Ralph (Jeff Lillico, a flesh-and-blood time capsule) fights abroad for Canada and turns into one of Japan’s prisoners of struggle.
In the end comes an affirming and deeply shifting mutual understanding that suggests that an alternative to heal is always on the desk.
Based on Mark Sakamoto’s memoir, playwright Hiro Kanagawa often overloads the dialogue with cliches and lofty phrasing. But, on the entire, “Forgiveness” is an spectacular feat. The large quantity of locales and occasions are deftly woven together, and staged with sweep and intimacy by Stafford Arima.
A new play called “Forgiveness” spans 4 a long time in the lives of two Canadian households. David Hou
Family drama and the long passage of time also energy the pageant’s best show of the 2025 roster, Shakespeare’s “The Winter’s Tale,” directed by Antoni Cimolino.
The very good romance exemplifies why I don’t know how to stop Stratford, where I’ve been schlepping to for 18 years. The must-sees are often quirky — a “Winter’s Tale” or a “Cymbeline,” moderately than a “Hamlet” or “Romeo and Juliet.” And the company routinely does the Bard better than any theater in New York so a lot as approaches, actually including the Public’s Shakespeare in the Park so-so productions of late.
Graham Abbey’s King Leontes, a good piece of casting, ranks with the best Shakespearean performances I’ve loved wherever. As the jolly actor’s natural gregariousness peels away to reveal his character’s twisted and unfounded jealousy of his spouse Hermione (Sara Topham) and best good friend Polixenes (André Sills), the rapt viewers stares on disgusted and devastated.
I suspect more than a few relate.
“The Winter’s Tale” is as effective a Shakespeare manufacturing as you’ll ever see. David Hou
Leontes alone implodes the lives of himself, his pregnant spouse and his poor younger little son Mammillus over a hot-blooded hunch.
What’s unusual and lovable — foul and honest, if you want — about “The Winter’s Tale” is that a lot of the second half, 16 years after those royal horrors, is a pleasant romp.
There’s spritely dancing and a pair of fabulous clowns — feisty favourite Geraint Wyn Davies as Autolycus and zany Christo Graham as the Young Shepard. Graham, by the manner, is Alfredo from Pixar’s “Ratatouille” come to life.
Don’t be completely fooled by the mirth. The remaining scene between Hermione, Leontes and Yanna McIntosh’s glorious Paulina is more heartbreaking and heartwarming than you might have ever seen it before.
“The Winter’s Tale” was Stratford’s best show of the 2025 season. David Hou.
And then, just when we predict Leontes has earned a second likelihood in previous age, Abbey and Cimolino powerfully remind us that some decisions can’t be undone.
This extraordinary “Winter’s Tale” is a combo of tragedy and euphoria in more methods than one.
How tragic that it’s already closed!
And how pleased that it’s been professionally filmed for a theatrical release and eventual streaming.
Meanwhile, there are loads of exhibits to catch before the season’s end — even if you would possibly exit, pursued by a blizzard.
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