Mid Month----June

I greet you tonight from Stratford, Ontario, home of the Stratford Festival theaters, and the Ontario Pork Congress.

We haven't been consuming massive quantities of pork, but it's early days, as they say in British crime detection novels.

Yesterday, however we enjoyed two wonderful productions at the Festival.  One was in a relatively small venue called the Studio theater, and featured music by Cynthia Dale (mostly) with a piano, bass, and guitar, and a male singer who joined her in some numbers after the intermission.

 These performances are crafted to complement the themes raised in the other plays being performed this year at the Festival.  Our own choices this year are Fiddler on the Roof, Blithe Spirit, and Waiting for Godot.

We saw Fiddler last night and it was just wonderful.  I have seen the play before in London in the last dress rehearsal before the opening of a revival with much of the early cast.  I know I enjoyed it then, but not nearly as much as I enjoyed last night's production.  It was just wonderful.  The voices, the energy, the pathos, the joy, and heartbreak.  It's all there.  Scott Wentworth plays Tevye, and he does it brilliantly.

I am always amazed when an actor here who I have seen in numerous dramatic roles turns out to be able to sing and dance as well.  Of course, I should know that in order to "make it" at this level of theater, you have to have numerous talents and amazing stamina. He is also playing Juliet's father in Romeo and Juliet.

So basically, these artists are performing and rehearsing constantly all through the season.  Few  people are in only one production, for some of the younger actors are playing extras and understudying other roles in many plays.

In case you haven't detected it from my words, I think this is such a magical place, and knowing of all the hard work that goes into it all does nothing to diminish my awe!  We have come here almost yearly for decades now, and I haven't been enthralled with everything I've seen, but when I love it, I love it wholeheartedly!

I hope your summer is proceeding nicely.  Do something  fun in June.  Summer goes by way too quickly!!!