new plays and world classics
share stages in Stratford Festival's 2004 season
The Stratford Festival of Canada comes alive with 'six Shakespeare plays, along with seven other productions, will be mounted at the Stratford Festival of Canada in 2004 as Artistic Director Richard Monette moves toward his goal of producing all the plays Shakespeare ever wrote.
"It has been my ambition to produce every play of Shakespeare during my time as Artistic Director at the Stratford Festival, and this season moves me very close to that goal," said Mr. Monette, who believes Festival enthusiasts as well as new playgoers deserve the opportunity to see the full range of works written by the world's greatest playwright.
In addition to Macbeth and A Midsummer Night's Dream, which have been produced in other seasons of Mr. Monette's tenure since 1994, the Festival will mount four Shakespeare plays not seen in many years at Stratford: King Henry VIII (All Is True), Timon of Athens, King John and Cymbeline.
There will be two musicals: Guys and Dolls and Anything Goes. "The classic musical, in many ways, is the heir to Shakespeare in the way the stories are told," Mr. Monette said. "In a musical, you have songs; in Shakespeare, you have soliloquies. There is an immediacy about the characters and the action that is like little else in the theatre between Shakespeare's time and the 20th century."
At the Avon Theatre, the Festival will also present the farce Noises Off and The Count of Monte Cristo, a swashbuckling stage adaptation of Alexandre Dumas's novel. "It is deliberate programming to suit the strengths of each stage," said Executive Director Antoni Cimolino. "The Avon is a traditional proscenium- arch house and it's a place that lends itself to musicals, comedies and spectacular entertainment."
While the 1,824-seat Festival Theatre allows artists to examine the "scope and size" of Shakespeare's works, the 487-seat Tom Patterson Theatre affords the chance to take an intimate approach that "comes very close to the text," Mr. Monette said. At the 260-seat Studio Theatre, the Festival will mount two new Canadian works: the third part of Peter Hinton's Swanne trilogy, titled The Swanne: Queen Victoria (The Seduction of Nemesis), as well as The Elephant Song by Quebec playwright Nicolas Billon. "This is an amazing play we've workshopped through our new play development programme and the script is a real page-turner," Mr. Monette said. The Elephant Song is presented as a double bill with a new Canadian translation by John Murrell of Jean Cocteau's The Human Voice. Rounding out the Studio offerings is The Triumph of Love, the Festival's first-ever production of a work by 18th-century French author Pierre Marivaux.
"Richard Monette continues to demonstrate his extraordinary ability to build a wonderful and diverse playbill around the works of William Shakespeare," said Mr. Cimolino. "With six Shakespearean plays, musicals, new Canadian works and classics from world literature, the Festival offers a broad range of theatre-going experiences for our loyal patrons as well as new visitors to Stratford." '
Here is the full description of the 2004 playbill, by theatre.
