Stratford reaches out to include more than classics

But this year, the festival's 57th, it has relaxed into what it has long been: a festival based on Shakespeare and other classics but reaching out also to crowd-pleasing musicals as well as recent plays by Canadian playwrights.

Of this year's 14 plays on four stages, just three are by Shakespeare but deftly varied in mode: a comedy ("Midsummer Night's Dream"), tragedy ("Macbeth") and tragic history ("Julius Caesar"). That those are the three Shakespeare plays most often read in American high schools just might be a coincidence, but perhaps not.

Another indisputable classic is Jean Racine's spare, poetic 17th-century tragedy of sexual obsession, "Phedra," starring the wonderful Seana McKenna (last done by Stratford in 1990 with the also wonderful Patricia Connolly). And "classic" surely applies to Chekhov's evergreen "Three Sisters."

Then there's Edmond Rostand's "Cyrano de Bergerac," which has the heft and poetry of a classic, seemingly coming direct from the 17th century even though it was written in 1897. And what else can we call "Bartholomew Fair" by Shakespeare's contemporary, Ben Jonson. Huzzahs to Stratford for tackling an entertaining play that's seldom done.

The classic label can also be applied comfortably to Oscar Wilde's exquisite turn-of-the-20th-century comedy, "The Importance of Being Earnest," especially as it features a classy drag turn by Brian Bedford as the draconian Lady Bracknell. Bedford is also doing his one-man tribute to Wilde, "Ever Yours, Oscar," which he did in Pittsburgh as a fundraiser for Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre in 2004.

This year's crowd-pleasing musicals are two, each honorifically "classic" in a way: "West Side Story," with its Shakespearean roots, and "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," which has its roots way back before Shakespeare in the comedy of classic Rome.

That leaves three contemporary Canadian plays: the masterful George Walker's "Zastrozzi" ("suspense, swordplay, sensuality and wit"), the premiere of the well-established Morris Panych's "The Trespassers" and Sunil Kuruvilla immigrant drama, "Rice Boy."

It's a menu matched by very few theater festivals in the English-speaking world, with real star performances, and it's less than a seven-hour drive from Pittsburgh. On this year's Post-Gazette theater trip, we saw the following three successes plus a rather dull "Julius Caesar." I can't be alone in hoping to get back to see more in the expansive season that stretches until November.

'Cyrano de Bergerac'

I give Rostand's great poetic melodrama pride of place because of its scope, rich language and a robust, starry performance by Colm Feore as the soulful warrior poet. This is that rare modern (well, 1897) play that deserves its turn on Stratford's great thrust stage.

Rostand's text is presented in the lively poetic translation by Anthony Burgess but with some of the original French retained, not just for the occasional curse or hyperbole but for passages of dialogue and even whole songs.

Directed by the star's wife, Donna Feore, "Cyrano" opens somewhat irresolutely with a modern youth who is then taken back into the 17th-century world of the play. But once there, we find a full and richly costumed world of theater, war and amour, with Cyrano the champion of all three.

He is a curtailed champion, of course, cursed by his grotesque nose to hold back in affairs of the heart. So he has to woo his beloved Roxane by proxy, in the handsome person of a younger guardsman, Christian, who is as beholden to Cyrano for his voice and words as Cyrano is to Christian for his handsome body.

But of course it's Christian who gets to enjoy the fruit of their shared wooing, until he is suddenly killed, just as Cyrano is going to speak for himself. So he is condemned to silence, until the final, tragic twist of Act 4, when Cyrano's "final" letter, which has served as Christian's, becomes Cyrano's in reality.

Along the way to this heartbreaking finale, there is plenty of swashbuckling action and pratfall comedy, but dazzling comic wordplay above all.

Feore has all the tools for Cyrano, vocal, physical and spiritual. Mike Shara, recently of the Shaw Festival, is a handsome Christian, who gradually earns our sympathy, and there are many fine smaller portraits. That includes the commanding insolence of de Guiche, played by John Vickery, who was so similarly insolent as Scar in Broadway's "Lion King."

Amanda Lisman's Roxane doesn't quite live up to the others, remaining a little lightweight to be Cyrano's grand passion. But who could ever live up to such a grand amour? The bottom line is that she can't; no one could. Cyrano's soul needs an object of devotion, but his passion is so great no object could ever measure up, so ultimately, he most loves his own loving.

And we are the beneficiaries.

'The Importance of Being Earnest'

We might just call it "The Importance of Being Brian," so great is the impression made by Bedford's performance. But in truth, it is too truthful to be called drag, and this Lady Bracknell is hardly draconian. The uninitiated might not even realize the performer is male; this Lady Bracknell is perfectly within scale.

In other words, she is no gaudy giant of imperious comedy -- with the exception of her outrageously funny costume in Act 3. (Her hat has a life, and maybe a whole taxonomy, of its own.) Even so, Bedford plays her as a believable social tyrant, and she's still as funny as one could hope.

But Lady Bracknell is only a supporting role, with less stage time than one recalls (or could wish). Director Bedford (yes, he does that, too) has a fine cast. The play does begin with a too-lapidary slowness, especially the Algernon of that same Mike Shara, but that lets slower audience members find their balance. Soon enough Wilde's brilliant dialogue, so apparently frivolous but actually insightful, picks up the pace.

Ben Carlson, another recent transplant from the Shaw, is spot-on from the start as the too-earnest Jack, and soon enough he and Shara's Algernon are in perfect sync. Andrea Runge joins them as the artfully innocent Cecily. Only Sara Topham's Gwendolyn feels rather labored, but as she is Lady Bracknell's daughter, perhaps the worst you can say is that she has that future battle-ax in her nature from the start. Poor Jack.

But lucky us. Director and actors play Wilde's exquisite chamber comedy to perfection, and as the frosting on a very delicious cake, there are the delicious costumes and frou-frou sets by the Hall of Fame designer Desmond Heely.

All this and Wilde's glittering wit, too. Every time I see "Earnest" I catch more of his covert gay (in the modern sense) jokes, and yet that modernity never takes it out of its period. Although dense with social subversion, it's also one of the greatest comedies in the language and affords much pure pleasure.

'A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum'

The same is not quite true of this baggy-pants musical, with its son-of-vaudeville book by Larry Gelbart and clever lyrics and music by Stephen Sondheim. It's certainly a lot of fun, with a cast well-drilled by artistic director Des McAnuff. What it lacks is an added degree of grit or bite.

That shortfall is best seen in the central role of Pseudolus, the witty slave, played by Bruce Dow. He has skills, but he lacks that edge of subversive desperation that lifted the great vaudeville comics to a higher plane. The production is just too nice. Even the prostitutes, who are certainly pretty enough, lack in-your-face edge.

Maybe that's just the way Canadians are -- competent and nice, without American raunch, subversion or edge. But that's a small lack to note when the country itself supports such a great classical festival as Stratford.