Richard Bain/Stratford Festival Jean-Michel Le Gal as Lorenzo and Sara Topham as Jessica in "The Merchant of Venice."

By Christopher Rawson
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

STRATFORD, Ontario -- In its 55th season, the Stratford Festival, the biggest repertory theater in English-speaking North America, is humming along, benefiting from its recent physical upgrades and with 14 varied shows running in its four theaters. But it is also experiencing change, because Richard Monette, its longest serving artistic director, is retiring after this year, his 14th.

Monette will be replaced for 2008 by a new four-headed creature led by general director Antoni Cimolino, leading a triumvirate of artistic directors, Marti Maraden, Des McAnuff and Don Shipley. They're already busy, re-auditioning everyone in the large company and announcing some of their plans, which include a return to the festival's original name, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

	Cynthia Dale as Edythe Herbert in "My One and Only." Click photo for larger image. Related article If you go: Stratford Festival essentials

Thus the festival will honor what has always been its focus (this year, five of its 14 shows are by or about Shakespeare), but it will continue to take all world theater as its province.

All this has an effect on the current season, of course -- especially the auditioning, which stirs up an acting company, most of whom have counted on returning each year. But mainly, that's news for the future. Today I'm talking about the current season.

I've seen four shows so far: stylish musical ("My One and Only"), dark Shakespeare ("The Merchant of Venice"), light Shakespeare ("The Comedy of Errors") and American regional classic ("To Kill a Mockingbird"). Today's two reviews will be followed by the other two, later this week.

Beyond those four shows, I'd point to a few others I hope to get back to Stratford to see. Chief among them is Brian Bedford in "King Lear." Bedford is one of my favorite actors, but he's not my immediate idea of Lear, so I look forward to that a lot. Seana McKenna is playing Anne Hathaway in "Shakespeare's Will." And Carnegie Mellon's Mladen Kiselov is directing David Edgar's "Pentecost," a bracingly contemporary play about art, imperialism and refugees -- not what you think of as the usual Stratford fare at all.

'My One and Only'

This isn't what you think of as the usual Stratford show, either, but having gradually edged into musicals via Gilbert & Sullivan and then musical versions of Shakespeare, the festival realized they were essential to its bottom line. And don't the great musicals qualify as classics?

Last year, that thinking led Stratford to do "South Pacific" and "Oliver," one a classic, the other a good Anglophilic fit. "My One and Only" can't claim to be classic, but the authors of its score sure can -- they don't come much classier than the brothers Gershwin. And since "My One and Only" is a "new Gershwin" pastiche from 1983, based on "Funny Girl" but co-opting great Gershwin standards from other shows, the score is classic, indeed.

The show itself, on the other hand, is deliciously lightweight, a silly thing about Billy Buck Chandler, an American flier determined to beat Lindberg to Paris, and Edythe Herbert, an English aquacade star being manipulated by a Russian thug who isn't as thuggish (or as Russian) as he seems. You may remember it as the Tommy Tune and Twiggy vehicle on Broadway. As Stratford's director/choreographer Michael Lichtefeld says, it must be the festival's biggest tap musical ever.

The result does them proud, with a perfectly serviceable ensemble and pleasant stars selling the fabulous score, enlivened by clever directorial touches and truly gorgeous art deco sets and flapper costumes.

With her slim body and haunting eyes, Cynthia Dale, Stratford's reigning diva (though she has also been a credible Maggie in "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"), is a perfect Edythe. Laird Mackintosh is a capable though uncharismatic Billy Buck. The comic second couple is fine, and Marcus Nance is commanding as the revivalist preacher by day, bootlegger by night.

The special role of Mr. Magix, though, which featured legendary Honi Coles on Broadway, falls to a youthful Mark Cassius, which defeats the purpose of the old pro teaching the young one his special brand of tap dance sophistication.

Overall, the audience (including the Post-Gazette theater group) loved it. Me, too.

'The Merchant of Venice'

If you think "Merchant" is a play about the quasi-tragic figure of Shylock, then this production directed by Richard Rose on the festival's great thrust stage is a disappointment, because actor Graham Greene simply doesn't have the vocal chops or emotional depth for the part. But Shakespeare is such a varied feast that Greene's shortcomings allow other parts of the play to shine.

Greene is the Oneida Indian actor best known from "Dances With Wolves" (film) and "Northern Exposure" (TV). It is an interesting idea to have the member of one oppressed minority play a famous member of another, but it remains an idea, because Greene is mainly stolid in his role, expressing little emotion.

Oddly, this leaves the play to Portia and Bassanio, and for once, the post-trial Act 5, which is usually so anticlimactic, emerges as a complex mix of hope and regret, looking simultaneously forward and back. If you believe, as many do, that Shakespeare wrote Shylock as a comic villain who achieves greater dignity than he intended, you could say this "Merchant" is closer to what he thought he wrote than to what we usually make of it.

For once, Bassanio and Lorenzo don't seem primarily fortune hunters; even Gratiano is less than usually objectionable. Portia remains as excessive in her defeat of Shylock as ever, but with our lessened sympathy for him, we are able to see that for her the trial is really about her husband and his good friend, Antonio, the merchant of the title.

Actually, the greatest disappointment is the usually fine Scott Wentworth's Antonio, whose chief character choice seems to be inaudibility. Yes, he's in love with Bassanio, as Portia quickly sees, but his defeat doesn't reverberate deeply. For once, then, the ending of this very problematic comedy is about as happy as it can be in this day and age, with the main tragic residue resting on Shylock's daughter, the guilty Jessica.

If this is praising with faint damns, so be it.