Another Stratford outing, begun with high hopes, sadly dashed.

I certainly do not want to denigrate the Stratford Festival. It consistently produces world-class theatre, and we are privileged to claim it as our own. Given that the level of performance is so high, one can be disappointed and highly critical when it falls short of one’e expectations - mine, anyway. Very short. I didn’t believe any of the actors, but one: Scott Wentworth. He is a consistently powerful performer, no matter what he plays, and utterly believable. I didn’t believe Macbeth for a minute. I couldn’t see him thinking and getting seduced by the witches and his own ambition. I just heard him shouting as he tried to convey conviction with more noise. And poor Lady Macbeth couldn’t get a fix on her role. She was a cute, sexy lady welcoming her warrior husband home; then she was a simpering hostess as she welcomed her king, Duncan. Then she became a fastidious wife and helpmeet expressing disgust at her messy, bloody hands. I don’t know how she played her walking nightmare. She had lost me by then. The best scene between her and her husband was silent. A long silence as she watched him wash away his battle stains and they both thought about his change of fortune, gave us a chance to think, too, and guess at their subsequent behaviour. It was the only sub-text they used.

The rest of the company was too fresh out of the Birmingham Conservatory, I guess (the in-house training school for rookie actors). They all still sounded as if they were reciting Shakespeare. Except Scott Wentworth. I still miss Brian Bedford. No matter what he was playing he spoke his lines as if they had just occurred to him. He made us part of his thought process.

You already know how I feel about standing ovations. This performance didn’t deserve one, at least the players didn’t. You can’t fault Stratford for production, though. The fights were great.

It was a long day, and I’m still behind in my blogs.

Anon, anon.

You probably don’t remember Damn Yankees, the 1957 musical by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, based on a novel by Douglas Wallop, The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant (1954). The Yankees baseball team had enjoyed such a legendary successful series of series that it was easy to believe that they had made a pact with the devil to guarantee their continuing supremacy. (The story was a variation on the Faust tale, of course.)

I thought of it/them this past week when the Yankees took our beloved Blue Jays in a sweep - three days of definitive victories. This, after a dazzling season, so far, for the Jays. The Yankees have been way behind, not likely to place in contention for top of their league, not even for a Wild Card placement - and I don’t know what that means. (Perhaps one of you will tell me.) After the trading and realignment of the teams, I understood that the Yankees had bid for and brought in a number of very young rookies, including pitchers, and they were using them and things started to happen, and that’s when I thought of Damn Yankees as they seem to be coming up. I must say, the thought of a bargain with the Devil intrigues me.

I wrote a comedy years ago about a fat woman who bargains with the Devil to be thin. This was long before the movie Shallow Hal, also about a fat woman, which was not Satanic but simply fantasy. Both plays are about perception, not obesity. A theatre in Iowa liked an earlier work of mine (Mark in 1973), that is, the artistic director liked it, and my fat play, too and produced it (winter, 1975, I think). It was the second biggest hit they had ever enjoyed. That wasn’t hard to understand because everyone I ever met in Iowa was fat. Then I was granted a reading by a Toronto theatre but received no nibbles.. That’s when I discovered that actors can make or break a reading, depending on whether or not they liked you. Next, a producer optioned the play but couldn’t raise enough money to put it on. Somewhere along the way, I rewrote it, and then I wrote it as a movie, and then I sort of left it in a file drawer. The Canadian playwright John Murrell once said, “You don’t finish a play; you abandon it.” Right on.

If I told the stories of all my fish that got away, you would wonder why I am not bitter or hopeless or resigned. Well, I’ve said before that failure goes to my head. It’s like waving a red flag at a bull. I stamp my feet and snort and attack again, and again

And maybe that philosophy will help the Blue Jays, too, because as I write this, they are losing to the Red Sox.

Ai me.

A definitive loss.