Another spring, another torrent of opening nights at the Stratford Festival.
Six of this year’s 11 mainstage productions officially premiered last week, and, as usual, the festivities involved plenty of red-carpet photos, blank verse, and dancers doing barrel rolls.
While the four productions I reviewed spanned different genres and styles, the presence of household-name director-designer Robert Lepage led me to reflect more broadly on the craft of directing, and how the demands of specific shows shift what’s entailed in that intense, wide-reaching job. You’ll also notice a faint throughline regarding cinematic staging techniques, and the ways in which directors are (or aren’t) taking inspiration from the world of film.
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Lepage’s Macbeth, created in collaboration with his company Ex Machina, demonstrates how complex it is to craft an effective directorial concept — because here’s a production that’s lucid on a broader level but surprisingly fuzzy from moment to moment.
The production occurs in the 1990s, during Quebec’s historic biker wars. In a stark contrast to the sparse physical worlds of last year’s Shakespeare offerings, this setting inspires a fleet of evocative visual ideas, courtesy of designers Ariane Sauvé (set and props), Michael Gianfrancesco (costumes), and Kimberly Purtell (lighting).
The show puts reflections to fascinating use throughout. Via deft stagecraft involving a two-way mirror, hallucinated figures — including a trio of transgender witches (Aidan deSalaiz, Paul Dunn, and Anthony Palermo) — routinely materialize behind Macbeth (Tom McCamus). After the antihero slashes his way to the top of the biker-gang ranks, the mirror seems to tilt, starting to repeat its image several times over and facilitating a distinctive rendering of Shakespeare’s climactic moving forest. (Like the director’s 2018 Coriolanus, which starred a few of the same performers, the production is happening at the Avon Theatre, granting Lepage more control over what the audience sees than would be possible on the Festival Theatre’s thrust stage.)
Much of the show occurs within a run-down, two-storey motel. It appears in several different configurations, spinning and breaking apart so the audience can view the action from opposing angles, with the drama often unfolding across multiple rooms; in the scene preceding the murder of Duncan (David Collins), we even seem to be observing from inside the walls.
The cast dons the requisite leather, sometimes over an appropriately Canadian flannel. Most of them get the chance to pilot e-bikes-turned-motorcycles. And Lepage imagines the murders in particularly juicy fashion; they range from drowning to incineration.
But atop this well-rendered foundation, the production sometimes lacks detail. While every scene receives its own clever framing, once the actors are in place, delivering a somewhat trimmed version of the text, Lepage doesn’t give them very interesting things to do (the show runs two hours and 45 minutes, including an intermission and overlong transitions — Sauvé’s motel is impressive, but slow-moving). More than once, actors pull up on motorcycles in front of a black curtain, before leaning or perching on them to converse; while that’s an initially compelling image, it’s a static way of staging a multi-minute scene.
The question then surfaces: Under the visual splendour, what ideas about Macbeth is Lepage actually trying to explore? His director’s note cites the toxic masculinity of biker culture, and this resounds in Gianfrancesco’s macho, bicep-revealing costumes. But I’m not sure that it much governs how the actors treat the text or occupy the space.
One character that resonates is Lady Macbeth (Lucy Peacock, playing the role at Stratford for her second time). During her first entrance, she gazes out the window of a motel to melancholy piano music (composed by sound designer John Gzowski) — next to the unfeeling bikers, this burst of reflection is welcome. Later, for the classic “out, damned spot” monologue, a similar melody returns, meshing with a tender performance from Peacock. Yet without further changes to the text, it doesn’t really work to have Lady Macbeth as the story’s sole tragic figure — she’s just not present enough in the show’s climax.
Sometimes, it even grows unclear why this Macbeth is a play. While there are many highly theatrical images, Lepage’s director’s note likens the script to a cinematic screenplay, and the show begins with movie-style title credits (as has become an Ex Machina staple). I do in turn feel that a couple of the production’s key elements may have fared better on film: Many of the actors, including McCamus, choose a rather low-key register — as if playing to a camera — and the motorcycles, which roll slowly across the stage, roar far less vigorously than they would on an actual Quebec road.
Still, considering the aesthetic pleasures of Lepage’s Macbeth, I do think the show could transform into something more interesting over time. Next year, it’s set to tour Quebec and Ottawa in a French translation, and I’m curious about that version — without the confines of Shakespeare’s text, it’s possible the new cast will feel more free to play.
Chris Abraham’s Festival Theatre production of As You Like It is more holistically realized, with most production elements traceable back to a single, central notion: change.
At the comedy’s start, violent political shifts are underway. After Frederick (Sean Arbuckle) seizes control of the local duchy from his sister, the Duchess (Seana McKenna), he exiles her to the nearby Forest of Arden. Soon, he also banishes the Duchess’ quick-witted daughter Rosalind (Sara Farb), who dashes off to the forest with her plucky cousin Celia (Makambe K. Simamba). There the two disguise themselves as boys, in part to playfully manipulate the ardent Orlando (Christopher Allen), who’s lovesick for Rosalind and also refuging in the trees.
Abraham relocates the action to a near-future dystopia. In Frederick’s realm, precious sacks of grain pile up, Rosalind and Celia converse behind walls of gridded metal wire, and the ensemble wields machine guns as they march through the shadows.
The production runs two hours and 40 minutes including one intermission, and, during its first half, the visual world keeps evolving. Abraham transitions from scene to scene emphatically, buoyed by Imogen Wilson’s agile lighting design, which contrasts expansive blends of blue and green (for the forest) with jagged corridors of white light (for Frederick’s domain). It’s also winter, and snow is a persistent presence.
But in the show’s forest-set second half, spring blooms. Though little narrative time has passed, flowers and grass sprout bountifully along the edge of the thrust stage (set design is by Julie Fox, a frequent collaborator of Abraham’s), and Wilson’s lighting becomes sunnier, less oscillatory. These visual changes bolster the text’s existing pastoral qualities, further underlined by jester Touchstone (Steve Ross) calling on the audience to bleat like sheep.
The protagonists of this As You Like It turn away from a technologically advanced society to embrace the analog. In an epigraph to his director’s note, Abraham quotes the Duchess’ claim that “sweet are the uses of adversity”; taken next to the production’s evocations of climate disaster, the line communicates that while it may be difficult to live among nature, the pleasures of a sustainable lifestyle are worth it.
Heightening this ecological subtext is the choice to genderbend McKenna’s character from Duke to Duchess (as director Jillian Keiley did at Stratford in 2016) — leading her band of misfits through the forest, she’s a vision of Mother Nature. Further eco-fodder: a final Rosalind costume piece, designed by Fox, seems to be crafted from found materials, including a plastic IKEA bag.
As the production reflects on different ways of living, it tests out contrasting methods of representing the world. Act One’s snowy dystopia resembles countless 21st-century films and television shows (from Children of Men to The Handmaid’s Tale), but Act Two’s springtime glade is more traditionally early modern, with the forest scenes embracing a rather leisurely pace. If this has the potential to bore viewers thrilled by the first half (or vice-versa), that may partially be the point, with Abraham seeming to ask what makes one way of seeing the world more stimulating than the other.
These thematic engagements are subtle — you could enjoy the show without digging into them much, thanks in large part to an emotionally attentive pair of lead performances (plus a sterling ensemble). Allen’s Orlando vibrates with a volatile degree of passion, laying the foundation for Farb’s fleet-footed Rosalind to run literal and figurative circles around him as she works to orchestrate the comedy’s complex denouement. Their dynamic is a supple, rhythmic dance, making it all the more joyful when they literally clasp hands for a final, celebratory jig.
On a list of Canadian theatre directors with distinct styles, Lepage and Abraham would be easy inclusions. But director-choreographer Donna Feore’s Festival Theatre production of Annie reaffirms that she should be there too.
Compared to many of the other musicals Feore has tackled — Billy Elliot, Guys and Dolls, A Chorus Line — Annie isn’t usually spoken of as a dance show. But together with New York-based arranger-orchestrator David Dabbon, Feore has punched up the score’s existing dance breaks and added several more, injecting the material with significant kineticism. (The 1977 musical was penned by composer Charles Strouse, book writer Thomas Meehan, and lyricist Martin Charnin.)
At the shabby orphanage of antagonist Miss Hannigan (Laura Condlln), the titular 11-year-old (Harper Rae Asch) and her eight roommates don’t just sing about the adversity of their “hard-knock” 1930s life, but do back-handsprings across the stage. In the program, we learn that Cydnee Abbott, who plays Pepper, holds the Guinness World Record for the most full-body revolutions in a backbend, and Feore doesn’t shrink from calling on the gymnastic abilities of Abbott and her fellow youngsters. Anchored by a clear performance from Asch, the group is a marvel, despite only dancing together a couple of times.
Later, when Annie arrives at the opulent home of billionaire Oliver Warbucks (Dan Chameroy) for a two-week stay, an ensemble of clean-cut butlers and maids go full “Be Our Guest” as they perform heavily choreographed spirals around her. (This number, “I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here,” is Feore’s most overkill effort: it’s unclear why Oliver’s employees are so ecstatic about an orphan arriving.) Next, when Oliver and his secretary Grace Farrell (Jennifer Rider-Shaw) walk Annie dozens of blocks through “N.Y.C.” to see a film, Feore keeps pouring on the energy; during the song’s final note, held by the ensemble for at least seven bars, she seems to pack in minutes’ worth of choreography.
Even outside the songs, Feore’s movement-heavy style generates a lush sense of place. Multiple times, at the beginning of a scene in a new location, she fills the stage with citizens going about their lives. They mill around for a few seconds before disappearing, creating an effect similar to that of a cinematic establishing shot. (Next to this vivid technique, Sean Nieuwenhuis’ location-evoking video projections come off as too literal.)
Some might frame this maximalist choreographic approach as Feore not trusting the material — but it’s Annie. While the score is lovely, the most the show says about its Great Depression setting is that the recession occurred. And that’s instructive for a young audience! But I certainly don’t think Feore is overlooking any trove of rich themes.
Among the mayhem, Condlln and Chameroy feast on their iconic roles. The former embraces her character’s pantomime-level largeness, complementing a New York-accented, saxophone-like speaking voice with a wild, stumbling physicality; as with her Malvolio in last season’s Twelfth Night, it’s incredible just how loose Condlln is on the Festival Theatre’s revealing stage. And, though his character can be similarly blustery, Chameroy does much to solidify the show’s emotional core; on opening night, Oliver’s climactic declaration of love for Annie resonated with great, rugged truth.
Plus, of course: Clue, a foxhound-poodle cross, was adorable in the role of Annie’s dog Sandy (he shares the part with the adjacently named Uno, a border collie-Australian shepherd cross).
Annie achieves its straightforward artistic goals, making for a solid addition to Feore’s string of enlivening Festival Theatre musicals involving muscular choreography, thoughtfully characterized ensembles, and fulsome use of the space.
Over in the Avon Theatre, director Tracey Flye hits the gas similarly hard for Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, composer-lyricist David Yazbek and book writer Jeffrey Lane’s 2005 musical adaptation of the same-titled film starring Steve Martin.
In an upscale commune on the French Riviera, the dapper, middle-aged Lawrence (Jonathan Goad) thrives on conning women out of money. He’s suave, slick, and understated. But new in town and threatening to complicate his monopoly is Freddy (Liam Tobin) — younger, rowdier, more carefree. A mentor-like relationship develops after their first few encounters but soon morphs into friendly-ish competition as they bet on who can swindle the affluent-looking Christine (Shakura Dickson) out of $50,000.
While Lawrence’s lavishly furnished mansion (designed by Lorenzo Savoini) exists as a recurring home base, the material’s cinematic origins make themselves felt in the several locations that only appear for a single scene (including, quite randomly, a dungeon). That said, Flye renders the musical’s different spaces with such commitment that the end result is one of intense theatricality. When a wagon and giant windmill appear upstage to punctuate a delightful Rodgers and Hammerstein spoof performed by Southern firecracker Jolene (Michele Shuster), it’s musical theatre all the way, with her blazing red hair finding its match in similarly coloured costumes (by Sue LePage) and lights (by Michael Walton, head of design at Stratford).
Much other dynamism complements this glitzy design. Stephanie Graham’s duet-laden, classic-Hollywood-inspired choreography sizzles with jazzy spins and kicks; many of the performances are intentionally broad, with Tobin’s confident physicality calling to mind Andy Samberg’s nonchalant antics in the 2020 Groundhog Day spoof Palm Springs; and Yazbek’s brassy, swinging score gleams under the music direction of Franklin Brasz.
But under this flash, I don’t know that I entirely see the appeal of the material. After just a few minutes of exposition, Lane’s script grows ironic and metatheatrical, winking at the audience almost constantly. While that could make sense as an endpoint, for me this self-awareness comes on too fast, before we’ve actually got a chance to know our central duo. From there, things just keep ramping up, getting nuttier and nuttier, while the emotional stakes of the situation remain hazy. Still, despite these manifold book troubles, the audience’s laughter on opening night sounded genuine — and Flye’s staging is both admirable and propulsive.
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As ever, I found it fascinating to observe the different ways directors employ the Stratford Festival’s impressive resources — that ever-trusty acting company, especially. And given those traces of the cinematic in the shows reviewed above, I can’t help but smile at the fact that the city of Stratford is home to the world’s smallest ticketed cinema. This is a city where movies seat 12, while theatre productions — often influenced by film — play to thousands. How wonderfully unique.
The Stratford Festival’s 2025 season runs until November 2. More information is available here.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
WRITTEN BY
Liam Donovan
Liam is Intermission’s senior editor. His writing has appeared in publications like Maisonneuve, This, and NEXT. He loves the original Super Mario game very much.
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