The 1984 Stratford Festival

The 1984 Stratford Festival Perhaps it should now be called The Gilbert and Sullivan Festival or the Brian Macdonald-Susan Benson Show, for the most brilliant mixtures of stage fantasy issued directly from the rich, radiant imagination of both director and designer. Savoy purists would, no doubt, have objected to the degrees of exaggeration and buffoonery in which the romantic, comic inversions of the operettas were carried, but the incessant streams of gay, whimsical nonsense were delightful waters in which to luxuriate with perverse pleasure. Once again Susan Benson's designs triumphed in their sense of colour. The Mikado and The Gondoliers were delightful contrasts, with the former moving from pastel delicacies to dazzling extravagances . The elegant, large, folding Japanese fan that dominated a black and gold set established one of the major motifs, and the other Oriental embellishments ravished the eye with spectacle. Despite seven changes in the cast - the most notable being Jean Stilwell in the role of Katisha, which was played rather like an acquired taste - the show retained its bright, liberal-hearted gaiety. The Gondoliers was more balletic, more subtle in its use of colour, as the dominant whites of the opening - in the pillars, steps, commedia Zannis,1 and props - gradually yielded to pink, cream, and melon hues. A more lushly romantic show, The Gondoliers was a deliberate visual contrast to The Mikado, with the tumbling scene-changing acrobats of the latter yielding to the lightly-mocking commedia dell'arte figures who strayed outside the frame of the action as well as participating within it. Both shows were invigoratingly fresh and deliciously entertaining, and were wonderful complements to the season's new operetta, Iolanthe. On paper, Iolanthe is a curiosity, with its apparently mechanical rhymes and rhythms, and strained wit, 136 but on stage it springs alive. History, as usual, will tell lies by suggesting that the legal crux of the play is something about the problems of "marriage with deceased wife's sister"; the truth, of course, is something more playfully mocking. There is, after all, a mordant note to the coincidence that the House of Peers in this play is a wholly bachelor establishment, and I detect more than a flutter of Oscar Wilde in the final metamorphosis of these leaping, pirouetting peers into winged fairies. Besides , there is the lingering matter of Strephon's odd duality: ~fairy down to the waist but awkwardly mortal beneath. Carnal roguishness insinuates itself into this sylvan Arcadia. Designer, director, and cast created their own imprints on the gossamer and music-hall piece. Benson's children's picture -book pop-up set, replete with aquarelle-tinted Arcadia for Act 1 and a miniature pewter Westminster palace-yard for Act .2. evoked the peculiar mixture of innocence and parody. Her Phyllis and Strephon were not the traditional powdered -wig porcelain figures that hail from the era of Leslie Rands and Rita Mackay, although Marie Baron's costume did have the air of a Dresden china figurine. Paul Massel's Strephon was a buff shepherd, with only the slimmest ribbons to set off his lyric romanticism. As Iolanthe, the fairy who transgresses by her union with a mere mortal, Katharina Megli was a glamorous swirl of )Vhite satin and chiffon rather than the imposing Valkyrie first designed by Wilhelm of earlier fame. The fairies came out of the British music-hall with spray-painted shoes, vaudeville costumes , and dainty fairy-wings. Their earnest but misguided attempts to trip delicately "in a fashion most entrancing" created a stampede of comic business. The peers were a regal procession of pompous, puffing, upper-class twits, aswirl in red velvet cloaks, ermine capes, and gold crowns and coronets. Victorian stage machinery - such as the moveable pulleys for fairy swings - was allowed to show nakedly as part of the concept of a showwithin -a-show. Revue d'etudes canadiennes Vol. 19, No. 4 (Hiver 1984-85 Winter) The choreography was a triumph of hearty eclecticism, where tap, softshoe, ballet, hootenanny, cancan, and musichall daintiness mingled madly. The singing, too, was eclectic. Marie Baron lacked a voice of absolute purity and steadiness, but her elegance and charm compensated abundantly for the rather direct part of...