Stratford: A town out of time

Shakespeare in 21st is well-worn territory in the same way that water is a well-liked drink

Review by Alyssa Lyon

For as long as I’ve been going to see Canadian Theatre (ostensibly my entire life), I have been aware of the Stratford Theatre Festival. The prestige it carries as one of Canada’s foremost theatre-going destinations are not lost on me. How could it be when its significance is beaten into you by almost every theatre teacher and drama instructor from here to Vancouver? Strangely, however, I’ve managed to evade it. I’ve been to theatre companies large and small across the Greater Toronto Area but it has taken me 22 years to make my way out to Stratford, Ontario to catch one of the 2022/2023 season offerings.

Back in October, a couple of friends and I drove down to this quaint town in Southern Ontario to see the festival’s most recent production of Hamlet directed by Peter Pasyk. I am a burdened individual–I like Shakespeare, a lot. I have a favourite play (Much Ado About Nothing) and even a favourite character I’d like to play (Volumnia in Coriolanus). But I’m not delusional; Shakespeare is well-worn territory in the same way that water is a well-liked drink. In order for it to work in the 21st century, to work for those not previously engaged with the material, to work for those who have engaged with it for most of their adult lives, it needs to be many things. Mostly, though it needs to be engaging in some measurable way (staging, casting, periodization, costumes–anything).

Shakespeare at Stratford is up against other notable challenges, namely that one of the founding pillars of this festival is the re-production of Shakespeare’s work year after year on stage. Many questions continue to be raised about the need for Stratford as a festival, why fund a Canadian festival so well when it does not produce the same volume of home-grown or even original works as other theatre companies? Needless to say, there was a lot riding on this Hamlet production.

So how did it perform? Pretty well. Set in modern times, Patrick Lavender’s set design, Michelle Bohn’s costume design, and Kimberly Purtell’s lighting design all coalesce to create a production that feels like it could have been ripped from the world of the most recent Gossip Girl reboot. Amaka Umeh’s performance as a non-binary Hamlet was fiery, passionate, and dynamic. Umeh’s dynamic and lively stage presence makes their performance easy to recall even months after. They are undoubtedly the heart of this production. Other highlights include Austin Eckert’s earnest and thoroughly modern Laertes. Both Umeh and Eckert are particularly impressive in the way that they are able to imbue 400-year-old text with a fresh voice and new life.

Ultimately though, this production of Hamlet, much like the Stratford Festival as a whole, works because of the context it exists within. Stratford is not exactly the venue one goes to in search of challenging theatre, and although this production of Hamlet is certainly a departure from more stunted fair from years past (2016’s production of Macbeth is a particular low point in my memory), it is successful because so much of the other ‘classic’ work around it is stagnant. While this production of Hamlet could have been staged with potentially more freedom to be even more liberal with the text, the town and play will only challenge its well endowed patrons enough only to keep them coming back for what they believe to be challenging, cutting edge theater.