Festival Theatre is an amazing tent-like theatre, designed to look like the original big tent that was in this spot. Built initially to enclose its impressive "thrust" stage in the 1950s, the temporary tent theatre eventually graduated to brick and mortar (and wood).
Tonight we saw the only Shakespeare play of the nine shows we saw in Ontario, which is a bit impressive given that Stratford is known as a Shakespeare-themed festival. Merry Wives was set in a 1950s-ish version of small town Ontario (say, Stratford?). Yet again, an understudy was needed for the actor who was missing at the Private Lives matinee earlier in the day. (He was supposed to play Falstaff, a rather large part (in more ways than one!).) And yet again, the absence was covered smoothly and professionally. (We learned the next day that the missing actor was recovering from laryngitis, so not a long-scheduled absence or anything, which made it all the more impressive.)
C liked the production quite a bit, although we both found the story a bit silly and a bit regressive from a gender role perspective, which seemed all the more stark after Shaw's more equal view of the sexes. Still, there's nothing wrong with a bit of Shakespeare fun, eh?
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