if anyone's interested - next year's Stratford season

I meant to take note while I was up there, and didn't, but I've hunted through the press releases and found the announcement of next year's lineup.

Festival Theatre

• The Tempest (with Christopher Plummer as Prospero, so it'll be a tough ticket and there will inevitably be applause the moment he appears, which I hate, but I'll go anyway, of course)
  
• As You Like It (with Brent Carver as Jaques, hurrah)
  
• Kiss Me, Kate (which probably not, but I might change my mind at some later date)
  
• Dangerous Liaisons (which I might go see in any given year apart from I think my schedule will already be so packed I might not be able to)

Avon Theatre

• Evita (I might be persuaded depending who's in it, but I suspect I won't be able to talked into going unless someone hands me a free ticket and arranges for there to be nothing else I'd rather do)
  
• Peter Pan (the play, thank god, since they've used up their musical slots, and depending who's in it I might give it a look)

Tom Patterson

• The Winter's Tale (yay, yay; I have an unreasonable affection for this play)
  
• Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris (with Brent Carver, making two Ja(c)ques in one season for him, heh; I'm not sure I'll have time for this, though, alas)
  
• For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again (which I imagine is an instance of their continuing to support Canadian playwrights, a practice I endorse, but not sure I've got room for this play on my agenda)

Studio

• The Two Gentlemen of Verona (this will be the play that finally gets me into their Studio Theatre, where I have not yet had occasion to go; the less-frequent Shakespeares, your Two Gents and your Cymbelines and your Timons of Athens and so on, I feel like if I get a chance to see them, I ought to take it, because who knows when another opportunity will come up? This might also be the first time that I am eager to see 100% of the Shakespeares they're doing in a given season. Huh.)
  
• King of Thieves (see above re: Canadian playwrights; this is evidently an adaptation of Beggar's Opera, moved from London to New York, and is a "play with songs", and basically, spare me)
  
• Do Not Go Gentle (Geraint Wyn Davies' one-man show about the life of Dylan Thomas, which, GWD aside -- and I do like him very much, plus, I dare you to find someone more Welsh to do this thing, assuming you want it done [g] -- is likely to be unbearably depressing, don't you think?, I mean, Dylan effing Thomas, in addition to my general low threshold for one-person shows. So, no.)

So that's looking like the following for me, at this early date:

yes

• The Tempest
  
• As You Like It
  
• The Winter's Tale
  
• The Two Gentlemen of Verona

reserving judgment

• Dangerous Liaisons
  
• Jacques Brel ...
  
• Peter Pan

no

• Kiss Me, Kate
  
• For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again

hell no

• Evita
  
• King of Thieves
  
• Do Not Go Gentle

Year-ahead planning concludes. Message ends. :-)

more on the Stratford Festival

My usual Stratford companion, C, and I disagreed in the car on Sunday about a couple of points in our shared history -- specifically, whether she had been with me when I saw The Two Noble Kinsmen (I said yes, she said no) and whether I had ever seen Titus Andronicus (she said yes, I said no). So this evening I looked in the Archival Box O Programs to research the matter -- I was right on both questions, as it happens, but she claims the hormones associated with being seven months pregnant are addling her mind, so she can be excused. :-) Anyway, though, for a giggle I wrote down what I'd seen up there each year so next time I wonder I can answer the question with keystrokes rather than aging original documents.

Understand that I grew up with videos (in many cases recorded from the CBC, back when we still got the CBC as far from Canada as I grew up) of the Stratford productions of The Mikado (1982), The Gondoliers (1983), Iolanthe (1984), The Pirates of Penzance (1985), and As You Like It (also early 80's some time), so for a long time I kept after my parents to take us up there so we could see some stuff live. They'd gone a number of times before I was born, so they were happy to resume when they judged us old enough. In 1990 my brother was ten and that was good enough for them.

( 1990 )

1991, we apparently didn't go.

( 1992 )

( 1993 )

( 1994 )

( 1995 )

( 1996 )

( 1997 )

( 1998 )

( 1999 )

( 2000 )

In 2001, we were intending to go toward the end of September, and that turned out to be a difficult time to make plans to leave and return to the United States, so we didn't.

( 2002 )

( 2003 )

( 2004 )

And, just for completeness of the record all in one place: 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008, I didn't go. School, work, $. And then, ( 2009 )

So for those of you keeping track at home, that's 17 (or 18, if you count the two Henry 6's as all three parts) of the plays I've seen at Stratford (along with whatever-all I've seen elsewhere, which I have), including two Romeos and Juliet, three As You Like Its, and four bloody Midsummer Night's Dreams, so I think that's probably enough of that for a while. I mean, they're not wrong, when they keep doing it, that it'll sell, I guess, are they. But given that half my reaction this time was that they must have costumed it the way they did because they had to come up with something, it might be a good time for me and Dream to take a break.