STRATFORD, Ontario -- Big Daddy, Prospero, Jaques and Cinderella -- that's a sample of the vivid characters encountered on a recent two-day visit to the Stratford Festival, born in 1953, the largest classical repertory theater in North America.

	If you go: Stratford Festival, Stratford, Ontario Information: A well-illustrated, detailed 128-page schedule of plays and many other festival programs, along with a visitors' guide to hotels, B&Bs, restaurants and other attractions is available from the Stratford Festival, Box 520, Stratford, Ontario, Canada N5A 6V2; phone 1-800-567-1600; fax 1-519-273-3731; e-mail orders@stratfordfestival.ca; Web site www.stratfordfestival.ca. Tickets (from above numbers) vary according to play or musical, theater, location and day of week and whether you book more than 60 days ahead. The range in the Festival Theatre and Avon Theatre is Canadian $50.50-$114.39 (U.S. $41-$92.66). Extensive patron services include a free accommodation bureau (1-800-567-1600; www.stratford-festival.ca; e-mail accommodations-@stratfordfestival.ca. Shows: "The Tempest" and "As You Like It" (both Festival Theatre) run through Oct. 28 and 30; "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" and "Into the Woods" (Avon Theatre), through Oct. 29 and 30.

From its April opening until its closing Nov. 6, it will have staged 14 shows in rotating repertory in its four theaters. Artistic director Richard Monette has announced a "Saints and Sinners" theme, broad enough (which is the point) to embrace the wide variety of the season's characters and times and places, which go from medieval to modern.

I was eager to see William Hutt's Prospero, but I wasn't so much looking forward to James Blendick's Big Daddy or "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" as a whole. But expectation, I discovered yet again, isn't always a good guide.

'Into the Woods'

When Stratford first varied its diet of Shakespeare and the classics by adding musical comedies, it lessened the shock by choosing Gilbert & Sullivan (classics of a kind) and then musicals with a specific Shakespearean heritage, such as "Kiss Me Kate" or "West Side Story." More recently, there's been no such rationale. But "Into the Woods" is different: The modern musical theater can hardly provide a richer thematic approximation of a Shakespearean comedy than this journey of discovery.

That's always been clear, but at Stratford the theme of painful encounters deep in an emblematic forest is sharpened by implied comparison with Shakespeare's own comedies of similar magical sylvan transformations, as in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" or "As You Like It." They might well be called "Into the Woods," too.

This comparison is furthered by the musical's sources in fairy tale, like the stories behind "The Winter's Tale," "Pericles" or even "King Lear." And the libretto by James Lapine and lyrics by wordsmith Stephen Sondheim have a Shakespearean wit that rises to wise poetry, with Sondheim's sweet and resonant score providing poetry of its own.

Most daringly, director Peter Hinton and designer Dany Lyne (both sets and costumes) have re-envisioned "Into the Woods" as free of its visual allusions to the Brothers Grimm. "We have forests in Canada," they say. "Why make it a European forest?" The result is stylized magic, part Gorey, part Magritte, with imprisoning black trunks topped by huge red leaves above a green forest floor. The characters appear all in white, with just the red of Jack's hair and the glow of the Baker's fire for warmth.

That color scheme gradually varies, with the fantastical vegetative profusion of the Witch's garb, the decadence of the Cinderella court and the astonishing Rapunzel, who is her own tower of white. There's no traditional look for Red Riding Hood, and her seducer wears a full-body wolf's suit, all blue. A sky looms mistily, sometimes soft, sometimes turning metallic and reflective.

In this vividly imagined mythic world, they enact converging fairy tales -- Red Riding Hood, Jack the giant killer, Cinderella and Rapunzel, all woven together with an original tale of a Baker, his childless Wife and the Witch who cursed them because his father stole some magic beans. Sondheim wittily alludes to others -- Snow White, Sleeping Beauty -- but his and Lapine's most audacious step is to go beyond "happy ever after" and explore loss and a post-apocalyptic image of interdependence.

Stratford's performances are solid without quite measuring up to the major-league level of direction and design. Susan Gilmour's Witch cackles embarrassingly, though she's better as the butch figure of Act 2. Neither Prince has the comic panache the roles need. But generally, the performances are simply different from those we're used to: Bruce Dow's Baker is less cute than bumbling, Kyle Blair's Jack is more punk rebel, and so on.

Vocally, it is very strong, and that's what you take away: the aching sweetness and melancholy of Sondheim's songs, in which we learn of the inevitability of death but also discover an acceptance that urges us onward, evolving new families to sustain us in the dark.

'As You Like It'

In contrast, Shakespeare's similar story of escape from oppression and greed to magical rejuvenation in the Forest of Arden, a story often dusted with autumnal melancholy, seems positively sunny. Director Antoni Cimolino and designer Santo Loquasto have set the story in the late 1960s, another time of retreat from a society that seemed militaristic and oppressive, and the result is a vague sweetness that softens the darker strains.

The Bad Duke's court seethes with noisy despair, but festivity comes easily to the Woodstock-like gathering at the Good Duke's exiled court, especially thanks to an inspired score by the Toronto rock band Barenaked Ladies. Their music supports Shakespeare's several songs, starting darkly and then lifting the whole play with celebration.

Sara Topham's Rosalind and Sophie Goulet's Celia appear first in school uniforms, a nice touch to support their mooning after young men. Stephen Ouimette's debonair Touchstone has a wonderful bit where he sets out to illustrate "kill you 150 ways" by miming as many as he can. There are many smart directorial details, such as allowing Stephen Sutcliffe's sympathetic Le Beau to take refuge in the forest. Barry MacGregor's Good Duke wears a self-deprecating Doug McKenzie hat, and Dan Chameroy's Amiens is a charismatic lead singer. Only Graham Abbey's Jaques falls short of expectation -- well-spoken, but with no distinction to justify the Duke's regard.

This doesn't shimmer as did Stratford's 1983 "As You Like It," but it does give off that glow of festive rebirth that is the province of Shakespeare's mature comedies.

'The Tempest'

That's true to a lesser degree of "The Tempest," which starts off well and has a telling heart, but doesn't have the intense glow you might expect.

The beginning is beautifully simple: Prospero, in the figure of the revered William Hutt, comes alone on stage, his hands trembling fearsomely, to hold his staff aloft and invoke the tempest. And the play ends with him alone, taking his leave. Those moments frame a production that is known to be the veteran Hutt's farewell to the Stratford stage; he is the show's heart.

But, perhaps as befits his age, it's a heart without much of the passion Prospero must overcome to forgive his enemies, which is the only true transformation in the play. Hutt can be angry -- unusually with Ariel, predictably with Caliban -- but that isn't passion so much as policy. Better, he can seize focus with a deliciously simple pause and query; he has moments of quiet irony; and there's a touching relationship with Adrienne Gould as his daughter, Miranda, an independent presence with whom he strikes sparks.

But sometimes the avuncular Hutt seems to be gliding through the play, muted, husbanding his strength (as perhaps he is). Giving instructions to Ariel, he speaks in a saintly falsetto, as though he were already on the way to his reward. There is more surprise in Ouimette's gnarled and furious Caliban and Jacob James' ethereal, iridescent-feathered Ariel, and more zest in the courtship of Miranda and Ferdinand (Jean-Michel LeGal).

Festival artistic director Richard Monette directs, with, he says, reference to John Hirsch's enchanting 1982 production. Unfortunately, he hasn't summoned the magic of its storm-tossed opening or the opulence of the apparitions summoned by Prospero then. The audience, however, rose for an ovation for Hutt, whose career (and moments here) deserves no less.

'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof'

Staged on the 50th anniversary of "Cat's" Broadway debut, this was a surprise, a strong account of a play often misrepresented in memory. Partly, that's the fault of Tennessee Williams' different versions and the much-changed movie, which may obscure just what and who the play is about.

This version is Williams' 1974 re-write, with its frank discussion of homosexuality and in which Big Daddy makes a somber reappearance in Act 3. It has a simple clarity. Act 1 belongs to Maggie -- it is basically her monologue to her barely responsive husband, Brick, who is drinking himself into oblivion. Act 2 centers on Big Daddy's confrontation with Brick, and Brick's revelation of Big Daddy's cancer. And Act 3 focuses first on the family and retainers (doctor, minister) as they awkwardly tell the truth to Big Mama, and then on Maggie's attempt to seize the future and compel Brick to join in.

The performance revelation is Cynthia Dale, usually a musical comedy star, who makes a lithe and luscious Maggie with the sinew to carry off that huge Act 1. James Blendick is too elegant for the essential coarseness of Big Daddy, but he certainly has the man's rumbling force, and you feel his desire and dawning despair. Lally Cadeau is not afraid to capture the awful grotesquerie of Big Mama. And David Snelgrove makes a very pretty, cool and insolent Brick.

On the one hand, "Cat" is a battle between the rituals of civilization, whether decadent or attractive, and nature, red in tooth and claw. But mainly, it is a tightly structured drama of character, and Monette directs with a proper focus on the performances. Stratford is also doing Williams' "Orpheus Descending" this season, and on the basis of "Cat," it would be worth the visit.