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The Festival Main Stage Theater
In 2009 we saw Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and MacBeth, Chechov's Three Sisters, Ben Jonson's,
Bartholomew Fair, as well as Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (see photo and comment below).
Also Cyrano de Bergarac and the premier of a Canadian play, The Trespassers,
plus the musicals, A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum and Westside Story.
(The Stratford Festival takes place in four separate theaters.)
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The most photographed swans in North America
show themselves off in the Avon River. |
Jane Vieth Suits
In front of the Tom Patterson
Theatre.
Patterson was a local Stratford businessman
who dreamed up the idea of a Shakespeare Festival
in 1956 because the name of the town was Stratford
and it had an Avon River going through it.
The first plays were in a tent. Alec Guinness
was Richard III in the first show in 1957.
The rest is history. |
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Jane and Fr. Charles Klinger
Charles is the head pastor of St. Paul's Catholic Church,
Westerville, OH. St. Paul's serves 4,000 families
in this suburb of Columbus. He's a medieval scholar
and a political liberal.
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Alan and Charles Klinger
Charles joined us for the fourth time in our annual trip to Stratford
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Jane, Alan and Charles Klinger
In this photo we sit in the two seats we dedicated to the memory of over
thirty years of attending the Stratford Festival with our group.
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Jane and Alan
Our two seats were immediately behind the two seats
we had dedicated to our long time Stratford companions,
Anne Johnston and Beverly Suits in 1998.
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Anne Ousterhout Johnston and Beverly Suits
Anne and Beverly were dear friends who annually made a pilgrimage to Stratford as
part of our group. They both died in 1997. We dedicated two seats to them in 1998. |
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A pair of Mute Swans
Their wings are clipped so they don't migrate.
They spend the winter in cages. The main hazards
for the cygnets are the snapping turtles
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The Avon River
It runs through Stratford and is
Ideal place for a canoe.
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The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde
Starring Brian Bedford as Lady Brachnell
"When Mr. Bedford strides onstage in the full regalia of a Victorian gentlewoman,
a tuft of angry-looking tulle crowning his head, you instantly come to share
Lady Bracknell’s indifference to insignificant matters, so forcefully does he
communicate the implacable will of this glorious theatrical creation.
Mr. Bedford knows that there is no room for low camping in high comedy.
And while 'in matters of great importance, style, not sincerity, is the vital thing,'
as one of the play’s characters asserts, Mr. Bedford manages to accommodate both.
His performance is as impeccably stylish as it is thoroughly sincere."
-- NY Times Review Aug. 26, 2009 |
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The Festival Grounds and, in fact, the entire city
is beautifully landscaped |
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