Representing Theatre: Stratford’s 1989 Season

Fallowing the Arts Representing Theatre: Stratford's 1989 Season One of the striking features of the Stratford Festival over theyears has been its employment of an accomplished artisanat of the theatre - shoemakers, milliners, cutters, cabinet-makers and so on. Devotion to such crafts was especially ardent in the formative years when the seriousnessand competenceoftheventure had to be established. The tradition has continued butold habit and changingcircumstances have so altered its meanings that ithas longsince taken ona rather selfparodicair . Theforegrounded articles of wood and leather, velvet and fur, plastic and steel, skillfully manufactured in the theatre workshops, once inspired confidence in the theatrical proceedings, somewhat as mahogany may for board meetings; now, however, suchexempla of a familiar Stratfordian virtuosity tend to be distracting. In Dekker's The Shoemakers' Holiday , presented in the Festival Theatre, fine footwear intricately decorated was not surprisingly but very prominently displayed, both in theexamples inscribed in the text and thoseextrapolated from it. And the shop itself was the epitome of a Stratford setting, its dumb eloquence attesting to the wholesomeness offashioning artefacts by hand, out of natural materials. Like so many stage furnishings that have gone before it, the shop piece was snugly installed between the (for this season) permanent wooden pillars. It was an ingeniously hinged cabinet that opened to reveal shelves, fittings, tools, sheets and thongs ofleather, and soon, the kind of set-up that a yearning accountant, or any hobbyist intentoncreating in his basement an artificer's paradise, might emulate. Thus the stage shop became the siteofnostalgia for the lostutility ofhandicraft , unconsciously radiating a powerful set of meanings that stem from William Morris and the arts and crafts movement ofthe late nineteenth century. 148 In the vicarious relief from modern apraxia afforded by a well wrought prop, there are real, even therapeutic, pleasures for the spectators, but the fullest satisfaction to be derived from such an object is probably to be found in the theatre workshop , in its making. And its severe theatrical limitationsare that, onceexhibited, it has lost much ofits interest; repeated use usually makes itotiose. For these reasons props, like furnishings and wardrobe, are often firmly subordinated to actors. The costumes for the Dekker play, designed by Debra Hanson, were in keeping with the geniusofthe pieceand ofthe place. As Lord Mayor, dressed in his grand red gown, Simon Eyre, played by James Blendick, was every inch a Stratford figure and so were he and his men in his shoemaking days. Their working leathers conveyed much the same messages (not entirely foreign to the spirit ofDekker's play) as the leathers onevery busy city street: this theatre, the supple skinssang, has fashion sense, the financial means to indulge itand the wit to accommodate period to chic. The furthest extreme reached by the production in this respect was the collaboration by actorand designer by which Firk's leathern backside , continually thrust at fellow players and spectators for theirdelectation, was so prominently featured. 71ze Shoemakers'Holiday is a mostly genial play celebrating the mutual affection of King and Commons, good luck, commercial success, and the (ultimately) happy loveofa pairofrunaways, another less fortunate young couple and a supremely fortunate old one. James Blendick, who spread his geniality no less lavishly than Eyre's author, was a shade too warm forcomfort and the production overall strove to match Dekker's professed dedication to mirth, as well as his satisfaction with the fictive social harmony of the past as viewed through sixteenth-century spectacles. Still, Dekker's tints are not all rosy: the young shoemaker, Ralph, is maimed, poor fellow, in the battlefrom which Lacy, the aristocratic young lover, is AWOL; and the sufferingsofJane, Ralph's supposedRevue detudes canadiennes Vol. 24. No. 4 (Hiver 19v"9-90 Wimer) Scene from771eShoemakers'Holidayby Thomas Dekker. Directed by David William. Left to right: James Blendick as Simon Eyre; Pat Galloway as Margery. Photographer: Michael Cooper ly widowed wife, are poignantly presented by the playwright - as they were indeed by Peggy Coffey as Jane. But David William, the director, took care (as Dekkerdid) to keep the portrayalofRalph and Jane well within the bounds of the touchingly pathetic and not to let it disfigure the general contentment of the shoemakers and all. The...