A Ben Jonson rarity plus Oscar Wilde and Anton Chekhov spark Stratford Festival

A Ben Jonson rarity sparks Stratford Festival

STRATFORD, Ontario — They may call it the Stratford Shakespeare Festival but it is one of the Bard’s contemporaries — Ben Jonson — who gets the most unexpected and satisfying showcase during the first half of the renown repertory theater’s 2009 season.

The play is called “Bartholomew Fair” and one hesitates to describe director Antoni Cimolino’s sprawling yet clearly focused production as a revival, particularly since probably very few sitting in the Tom Patterson Theatre have ever seen the early 17th century comedy on stage. Supposedly this is the work’s professional North American premiere — nearly 400 years after it was written.

Big nonprofit theaters are the only places a play such as “Bartholomew Fair” can be done these days. And Stratford, despite an economic uncertainty that doesn’t seem to be ending any time now, has managed to give the play the full production it deserves. A gargantuan cast — more than 40 characters — swirl through Jonson’s slice of high and low life during a hot summer carnival day in London.

The Patterson’s lozenge-shaped playing area is ideal for this long parade of people. The space resembles a city street, a thoroughfare where the pious and the profane can mingle, not always with civility. Just don’t expect much plot. But Cimolino’s fine cast has a way with the language, both poetic and scatological, that will make you forget that not much of anything is going on.

Jonson displays a generosity of spirit toward these motley individuals. And so does Cimolino, whose day job is general director of the festival.

The colors — thanks to designer Carolyn M. Smith — are as vivid as the characters. It’s true ensemble work, but special mention should be made of Lucy Peacock’s more than full-figured Pig-Woman, Juan Chioran’s unctuous Puritan and Ian Lake’s cheerful lunatic, Trouble-all. There’s a method to Jonson’s chaos, and Cimolino and company have made its boisterousness supremely entertaining.

“Boisterous” is not a word you would use to describe Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.” ”Elegant” maybe — style and story in perfect harmony. And when both are as well served as they are at the festival’s Avon Theatre … well, the results can be downright delicious.

Things get pretty tasty in this luxurious-looking production, directed by and starring Brian Bedford. The actor is no dummy. He’s taken the best role for himself — the imperious Lady Bracknell, a gorgon with perpetually pursed lips and a fondness for flamboyant feathered hats.

Wilde’s language may be the ultimate in wit, but Bedford, no slouch in the dialogue department, can get just as many laughs with a withering glance or two.

“Earnest” can seem frivolous, but it’s not. Wilde is quite perceptive in his skewering of late 19th century British upper crust and his opinions are surprisingly contemporary. But then, maybe it’s because hypocrisy never goes out of style.

Bedford is careful not to turn “Earnest” into a one-man show. Mike Shara as the conniving Algernon Moncrieff and Ben Carlson’s fussy John Worthing are perfect Wilde dandies, while Sara Topham and Andrea Runge delightfully swoon and simper as the objects of their considerable affection.

Bedford does get a solo spotlight in “Ever Yours, Oscar,” a 75-minute reading of some of the playwright’s letters written over a lifetime and ranging from Wilde’s schoolboy days to his broken exile in Paris.

Resplendent in a black Armani suit, the actor is a dapper intermediary. Standing at a lectern, he channels Wilde’s perceptive observations (the playwright would have made a first-rate journalist) with crisp assurance. Wilde’s thoughts range from his hilarious descriptions of a frontier audience on his successful American tour to gruesome remembrances of the horrendous prison conditions not only he but children were forced to endure.

Bedford is not the only star doing double duty this season. Colm Feore is a Stratford veteran who started making a name for himself in the United States in 2005 — with his Cassius all but stealing a Broadway revival of “Julius Caesar” out from under Denzel Washington’s Brutus. More recently, he has appeared on TV series such as “24″ and “The Listener.”

Feore plays the title characters in “Cyrano de Bergerac” and “Macbeth,” (both at the large Festival Theatre) and the performances couldn’t be more different. His proboscis-enhanced Cyrano is overtly demonstrative, at least when it comes to swordplay and wordplay; his Macbeth more resolutely introspective. And it’s Cyrano who wins by more than a nose. (Sorry.)

But then the production is directed by Feore’s wife, Donna, who knows how to show off her husband to good advantage. Edmond Rostand’s 17th century hero is awash in poetry and panache, and Colm Feore knows how to handle both.

Verbally and physically limber, he swashbuckles his way through Anthony Burgess’ deft translation as the busy production swirls around him. Cyrano pines for the lovely Roxane (Amanda Lisman), who only has eyes for the handsome yet tongue-tied Christian (Mike Shara — in remarkable contrast to his performance in “Earnest”).

Lisman’s Roxane is a shade tepid, but Feore and Shara earn genuine laughs and stir real emotions in the play’s famous balcony scene when Cyrano surreptitiously coaches Christian in the fine art of wooing the unsuspecting Roxane.

In contrast to Cyrano’s expansiveness, Feore’s lean, almost skeletal Macbeth is filled with a reflective self-loathing. Those scenes provide the few quiet moments in director Des McAnuff’s flashy, explosively loud, modern-dress production that seems to be set in a vaguely postcolonial African nation. It’s a strange setting for a Scottish king hell-bent on obtaining and keeping power.

If the locale never quite makes sense, McAnuff, the festival’s artistic director, knows a thing or two about theatricality. The pace is nonstop and the large cast scurries along to keep up with the action. The best? Yanna McIntosh, who makes a sleek, murderous Lady Macbeth and Tom Rooney as the drunken Porter. He even scares up a few laughs, not an inconsiderable achievement in such a noisy, distracting production.

Far better ensemble work can be found in director Martha Henry’s production of “Three Sisters,” Anton Chekhov’s heartbreaking tale of hopes raised and dreams dashed — the stuff of real life.

The melancholy may be pervasive but it doesn’t detract from the dramatic tension underlined by the trio of title characters, who are bound by more than blood.

Lucy Peacock’s Masha mirrors bored, almost bitter disappointment; Irene Poole’s Olga silently suffocates under too much responsibility, and Dalal Badr’s Irina resolutely faces the fact that she will never return to Moscow and must get on with life.

Not a happy picture, but one these women depict with an affecting straightforwardness that quietly touches the heart.

On the Net:

www.stratfordfestival.ca