The Stratford Experience

The Art of War with Josue Laboucane and Jordin Hall. Photo by David Hou

For many years my children’s high school would load a bus full of theatre kids at 5 am on a Thursday in the fall and trundle them on the ultimate Theatre Kid Road Trip: 8 hours to Canada to experience the Stratford Festival. And every year my theatre kid would tell me how much I would LOVE it. So finally this year, I loaded up the station wagon at 5 am and pointed my car towards Stratford Ontario with the ambitious plan to see 6 plays in 4 theatres in 75 hours. I recommend this experience highly!

The Stratford Festival was founded in 1953 by Tom Patterson who thought a Shakespeare fest could bring economic development to his small town.  For several years the festival was  a summer outdoor event in a tent featuring the finest actors in the commonwealth. Today Stratford has grown into an April to November indoor festival in multiple venues.  The Canadian TV series Slings and Arrows was loosely based on the festival which gives months of steady work to a large ensemble of actors doing plays in repertory.   Surrounded by farm fields and oil wells, Stratford has a year round population of 33,000 but something like 1.7 million tourists visit each year and most of them come for the theatre.  With daily matinees and evening shows, there is a massive migration of pedestrians every day at about 1pm and 7pm (make restaurant reservations!) heading to a play, and everyone from the gas station attendant to the farmers market vendor wants to know what you have seen and what you loved. The town does not feel overcrowded, and it is a life affirming sensation to be literally surrounded by people preoccupied with live theatre.  Every local I spoke to has been to at least one show this season.

When selecting my schedule, I tried to focus on the new works and works I have not already seen.  I started with Forgiveness, a Canadian focused impressionistic work that compares  and contrasts and brings together Japanese Canadian internment and Japanese POW imprisonment when two survivors’ children fall in love in the 1960’s and want the parents to meet.  Powerful and moving and in the gorgeous new Tom Patterson Theatre it was a perfect kickoff to my weekend. 

Next up in the versatile black box Studio Theatre, I took in The Art of War, a 90 minute new play about an artist who was one of a cadre of painters charged by Canadian forces in WW1 to paint the battles.  Some of these painters would go on to be part of the  Group of Seven credited with creating a distinctly Canadian style of painting. It asks the question: What is the place of Art and is a painting or a photograph more “real”.  It dealt with PTSD and how having to capture depictions of war can scar someone as much as shrapnel can.  

That evening I headed over to see Dangerous Liaisons, a period piece adapted from the De Laclos novel by Christopher Hampton and directed by Esther Jun who reveled in the decadence and decay that preceded French Revolution. The fabulous set by Teresa Prsybylski and lush costumes by A.W. Nadine Grant gave this Festival Theatre almost in the round production a luxurious but rotten at the core feel.  

My Friday matinee was the delightfully funny but poignant Ransacking Troy wherein feminist playwright Erin Shields re-imagines the Odyssey where the women of Greece, sick of waiting for the men to return, embark on their own journey to end the war.  This is a play I want to import: a show that turns the patriarchy on its head and in revising the past opens us for a vision of a different future. Shields is bringing the woman’s point of view into a number of canonical works: read her!

Off to the proscenium stage at  Avon Theatre then for a truly marvelous musical: Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, the 2005 David Lazbek and Jeffrey Lane production that was based on the 1988 movie of the same name. Director Tracey Flye and choreographer Stephanie Graham kept this snappy and big. This is as good as anything on Broadway, and it was fun!

My final production before gassing up (Canadian gas is sold by the liter ) and heading home was The Winter’s Tale– I could not leave Stratford without at least one Shakespearean drama, and it was visually stunning and perfectly formed. Graham Abbey caps his 26th season with the fest with a psychologically complex Leontes. One of the joys of Stratford is getting to see an actor in multiple parts over a short period of time and Yanna MacIntosh was a fabulous Hecuba in Ransacking Troy and in this play gave forth a definitive Paulina. 

I did not see the motorcycle Macbeth or Annie. The superb quality of everything I did see is making me want to return, and the prices are very  reasonable, unlike Broadway these days. Utilizing some online discounts my six plays were less that $300 Canadian dollars. I do wish they had more audio described shows. The enhanced sound headphones did a booming business and for mobility issues they have good accessibility and attentive house staff who jump in to make theatre accommodating for physically disabled people.

In addition to fantastic theatre experiences, I had quite a foodie adventure in Stratford finding the miraculous Vann’s Bakery (the gluten free sourdough is worth driving 8 hours for) https://www.instagram.com/vannsfinebakery/?hl=en  and Monforte Dairy https://monforteonline.ca/ whose sheep cream cheese and water buffalo Rose Damore Cheese were Nirvana. There is a seafood restaurant, Annies,https://anniesseafood.ca/ that is Gluten Free Heaven– dedicated fryers for fish and chips and poutine, gluten free croissants that taste like the real deal, and a wall of freezers so you can take it home!  The restaurant scene in Stratford is excellent, they have lots of cool coffee shops and a microbrewery and a lovely river to stroll along, so my 75 hours with perfect weather was enjoyable on every front.  

I had no issues at the border.  We live in strange times and I realize that were I not impeccably white and old this may not have been the case. I did worry about border difficulties. It was refreshing to be in a foreign country that was not very foreign.  I did note the grocery proudly labeled items that were made in Canada, and many of the plays showcased Canadian themes and concerns. We tried Canadian wine and focused as we always do on locally grown foods. Canadians are intrinsically friendly and while they are adamantly opposed to annexation they are most gracious hosts and neighbors.  

I exhort you: put the Stratford Festival on your list of things to do: there is still a month of shows to see and they have announced the 2026 season which will draw me back for a mix of old and new works and works I am not likely to see in our country. If you can't get to Canada they do have a streaming service you can subscribe to. For tickets and information, or streams go to https://www.stratfordfestival.ca/

No part of this review was created using AI

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