We Few, We Happy Few
Re-Visit the Shakespeare and
Shaw Festivals in Stratford and
Niagara-on-the-Lake.

By Hal Drucker
(With a welcome assist from Len Elman.)

Christopher Plummer as Prospero in the Shakespeare Festival’s 2010 production of “The Tempest.”

When I once asked lyricist Sammy Cahn, “what comes first for you, the words or the music?” Sammy’s answer was,” the phone call.”

Well, this particular phone call came from Len Elman, who with wife Elise, accompanied Alice and me two years prior to Stratford, Ontario and Niagara-On- the-Lake.

“What do you think about the four of us going back for another visit to the Shakespeare and Shaw Festivals?”

I murmured something like hence home you idle creatures, get you home and gushed,
Yo, let’s do it.

Procedurally and logistically we knew what the responsibilities would be. Len would once again handle the plane ticketing to Buffalo and car rental reservations from the airport. I would again secure the theater ticketing and hotel arrangements.

The timing of our journey would be predicated on agreeing to a selection of plays that would have optimal appeal to the four of us and/or eschewing those we may have viewed in recent productions. Our objective was to view and review as many performances as we could fit in to the least number of days. It turned out to be no fewer than eight shows in five days. The desire to see whatever vehicle Christopher Plummer would be appearing in was uppermost and accordingly we determined to build our visit around his availability. Christopher Plummer was miraculous in Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra two seasons back. You got it right, George Bernard Shaw at the Shakespeare Festival. This time Plummer was once again spellbinding as Prospero in The Tempest.

For the most part, we, like Yorick, had flashes of merriment from among the offerings we observed in the two hamlets.

Two years ago, we tried without success to book Stratford’s Arden Park Hotel. Failing that we stayed at the Westover Inn, which was charming and notable for the fact that it was Christopher Plummer’s residence of choice. As for this year’s stay, we were able to secure rooms early in advance at the Arden Park, in lieu of  the Westover Inn , whose one downside was being 12 miles from Stratford, making it inconvenient to nap or snack between plays. At the advice of Festival officials, we reserved well in advance for the Arden Park Hotel, which was touted as being within walking distance of most of the theaters and shops that we visited.

Arden Park Hotel
Days I, 2, 3  August 14, 15, 16
552 Ontario Street
Stratford, ON
Canada N5A 6W4
1 877-788-8818
www.ardenpark.on.ca/

Overall impression
Though it is purportedly the newest hotel in Stratford, its architecture is austere and unharmonious with the surrounding homesteads. 
Convenience  
Proximity to the Festival Theater.

Physical Plant  
Drab and unimposing.

DAY ONE (Saturday, August 14)

Jet Blue Flight from JFK to Buffalo Airport. Hertz Car to Stratford. Due to an unforeseen traffic delay that took us off course, there was not enough time to check in at the Arden Park so we headed directly to the Festival Theater – grabbed a sandwich there and made our way to our plush seats at the wondrous Festival Theater with 15 minutes to spare.

Stratford Shakespeare Festival
1-800-567-1600
Stratfordshakespearefestival.com
All Shakespeare Festival Photos by David Hou.

Plummer with Julyana Soelistyo as Ariel.

Plummer with Trish Lindstrom as Miranda.

The Tempest
Festival Theater
55 Queen St. – Capacity 1,826 seats
8 pm

The last production I saw of The Tempest took place in the Globe-like theater in  Stratford, Connecticut in 1960, as part of a proud  tradition of  Shakespearean Festivals that attracted the crème de la  crème of American actors. Katherine Hepburn played Viola and rather tamely, while Morris Carnovsky was regal and riveting as her father Prospero, the right Duke of Milan. I was always intrigued that Shakespeare may well have been influenced in writing The Tempest by the shipwreck on a Bermuda reef in 1609 of a boatload of convicts. I admired Carnovsky for his Lear-like portrayal but admired the man even more, when he stood up to the HUAC and refused to name names, though catastrophic to  his career. No superlative can do justice to the performance of Christopher Plummer, who though 81, is youthful in carriage, vocal timbre, strength and – above all, humanity, grace, kinship and benevolence with his surrounding players who like Trish Lindstrom as Miranda and Dion Johnstone as Caliban were either in awe of him or  not quite  ready for prime time.  The exception is the waif-like Julyana Soelistyo as a transfixing Ariel.  Artistic Director Des McAnuff directed with flourishes and flair.

Leonard Elman’s take: The Tempest: Believed to be Shakespeare’s final play (though he may have collaborated on one or two subsequently). Christopher Plummer’s classic acting was of the highest order (an understatement). The magic of his performance rivals the magic of Shakespeare’s poetry. When he spoke farewell to magic Prospero’s  (and Shakespeare’s to the stage):

                        Our revels now are ended, these our actors,
                        As I foretold you, were all spirits, and are
                        melted into air, thin air,
                        And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
                        The cloud capped towers, the gorgeous palaces
                        The solemn temples, the globe itself
                        Yes, all of which it inherit, shall dissolve;
                        And like the insubstantial pageant faded
                        Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
                        As dreams are made on, and our little life
                        Is rounded with a sleep…

It is Shakespeare speaking directly to us down the ages. A magical, magnificent, transforming theatrical experience.The English language has never been put to better use. (I think I’ll skip the forthcoming Julie Traymore film version, in which Prospero is a woman.) (Caliban too?)

Day Two (Sunday August 15)

My client Don Wall, National Editor of the senior publication Forever Young to which my columns are syndicated in Canada, joined me for a hearty breakfast in the Arden Park, and then joined the four of us for the matinee performance of Do Not Go Gentle.

Geraint Wyn Davies as Dylan Thomas

Studio Theater
34 George St. East
Capacity: 260 Seats
2 pm


Do Not Go Gentle
Hal Holbrook owes much to Mark Twain with his half-century of-one man portrayals of the man who defined cauliflower as cabbage with a college education. Geraint Wyn Davies, like Dylan Thomas, was born in Swansea Wales, and has for more than a decade been doing workshops and stagings of the fabled writer’s lyrical output. He offers an almost dispassionate exercise, punctuated by frequent gulps of faux John Barleycorn. I get teary-eyed listening to a recording of Thomas delivering his gorgeous A Child’s Christmas in Wales, but was emotionally unmoved by Davies’s clinical deportment. [In the spirit of repertory. we witnessed Davies in the minor role of Stephano, a butler in The Tempest]. To dispel any notion that he is a one-trick pony, Davies proved himself to be a resourceful and diabolical Edmund the Bastard in the memorable 2006 Lincoln Center Theater production of King Lear with Plummer in the title role. He is slated to play Sir John Falstaffin the 2011 production of Merry Wives of Windsor.

Leonard Elman’s take: An OK one-person show in which the one person portrays the Welsh poet Dylan Thomas.  All I can say is that if you had Thomas for a friend, you didn’t need an enemy.

Pazzo Ristorante   
70 Ontario Street,
Stratford, Ontario. Canada N5A 3H2
519-273-6666   
We were pleased to re-visit one of the finer restaurants that we encountered on our previous sojourn to the Festival. The Antipasti embraced a selection of locally cured meats, Monteforte dairy cheese and house-preserved vegetables. Rigatoni with wild mushrooms, fresh thyme, oregano and tomato chili sauce was outstanding as was the house-made ravioli stuffed with goat cheese, roasted garlic and pine nuts with an arugula pesto. The atmosphere and service contributed mightily to the enjoyment of the evening. One of the conditions I look for in grading any restaurant is the condition of the lavatories, which in Pazzo’s case was exemplary. Pazzo is situated close-by to the Studio Theater, where we had ample time to stroll leisurely to our second theatrical venture of the day.

John Vickery as the Duke of Milan (right) with Dion Johnstone as Valentine.

Studio Theater
34 George St. East
Capacity: 260 Seats
8 pm


The Two Gentlemen of Verona
One of the more imaginative productions of Shakespeare’s earliest comedies was done as a rock musical with a book by John Guare and introduced the late Raul Julia as Proteus vying with Clifton Davis as Valentine for the affection of Jonelle Washington as Silvia.  It had a gifted multi-racial cast and was staged outdoors in New York City Parks in 1971 before being mounted on Broadway a year later. It jousted exuberantly with the Bard’s language, and became a template for succeeding companies to mess with the master. Sadly this production fell as flat as a latke. Assistant Artistic Director Dean Gabourie’s premise of placing the action in the age of Victoria and his paint-by-numbers staging of a youthful, disengaged cast leads me to one conclusion: Hamlet’s advice to the players should have been required reading for each and every participant.

2011 SSF Season Stratford Shakespeare Festival
1-800-567-1600
Stratfordshakespearefestival.com

Day Three (Monday, August 16)
We checked out of the Arden Park in the A.M. and headed directly towards Niagara-on-the-Lake. We drove leisurely, since we assiduously determined not to attend theater that day. On the way we passed numerous wineries and grape fields and looked forward to visiting one right after checking in to the Prince of Wales.

Photographed from our window:  Prince of Wales personnel watering and tending to the hotel’s  exquisite assortment of plants and flower.

Prince of Wales
Aug. 16-19 (Mon.-Thurs.)
6 Picton (& King St.)
Niagara On The Lake, ON L0S 1J0
905-468-1362  
www.vintage-hotels.com/niagara-on-the-lake/hotels/prince-of-wales.php

This was our second stay at the Prince of Wales and we found everything as praiseworthy as our 2008 visit.

Overall Impression
Its elegant lobby and furnishing reminded me for all the world of its namesake, The Prince de Galles on Avenue George V in Paris.

Accommodations
Our room was roomy, tasteful and well-appointed, with a lovely view of the floral-lined street below.  

Prince of Wales Concierge Korey Rorison is a member of the distinguished concierge society, les clefs d’or.

Service
We upped our TD (Travel-desirable) Rating from “outstanding” during our last visit to “exceptional.” From the front desk to the concierge desk, to housekeeping, to valet parking to unlimited use of the internet in the business center, everything was scrupulously carried out to near-perfection.

(L-R) Elise and Len Elman, Alice

Len on a Roll

Hillebrand Winery and Restaurant
Niagara-on-the-Lake
1249 Niagara Stone Road
Niagara-on-the-Lake, ON
L0S 1J0
(800) 582-8412
www.hillebrand.com
This distinguished winery is less than 10 minutes drive time from the Niagara-on-the Lake township. During our previous trip, in 2008, we were startled to see so many vineyards in Niagara, let alone Canada. The Elmans and we vowed to come back, not only to soak up the rich Shavian theater scene once again, but to do some intensive wine exploration. For more than 30 years, Hillebrand has been crafting fine varietal wines from premium grapes grown in the heart of Ontario’s wine country. More than 30 years ago, it opened its cellar doors in Niagara-on-the-Lake, the heart of Ontario's wine country. In the decades that have followed, Hillebrand has been a pioneer in the Canadian wine industry.  In 1983, Hillebrand  created the region's very first Icewine, a bottle of which our traveling companions, the Elmans bestowed upon us. What is Ice Wine? It originates in the ice and snow within the depth of the Canadian winter. Frozen Vidal Blanc grapes are hand-picked in the middle of the coldest nights, then vinted into an intense, sweet libation that is best enjoyed chilled at the end of a meal or for sipping as an aperitif.


Hillebrand Winery Lunch
For our First Course, we chose between Sweet Pepper and Tomato Soup with crab slaw and white fish caviar and Romaine Hearts, with pastrami, egg, dill pickle and parmesan dressing.

For our Second Course, we each went for the Dry Aged Beef Burger with Ice Wine marmalade, Canadian bacon, cole slaw and Truffle fries, served on a Focaccia bun.
 
After a leisurely stroll around the lush vineyards, we headed back to the hotel for a blessedly quiet, theater-less evening.

Ristorante Giardino
Gate House Hotel
142 Queen St.
PO Box 1364
Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario
L0S 1J0
905 468-3263
www.gatehouse-niagara.com/RistoGiard.html
We re-visited this restaurant which we first encountered two years ago. It is a short block or so from the Prince of Wales and had an attentive and attractive wait staff, most of whom we’re attending Canadian or Buffalo-area colleges.

Day Four (Tuesday, August 17)

Escabèche
The Prince of Wales Breakfast at its Escabèche restaurant is superior in almost every way to morning fare at most restaurants this column’s reviewers have encountered in recent years. My one regret was not having made arrangements from New York to reserve for Escabèche’s splendid Afternoon High Tea which I reviewed two years ago and which is akin to such High Teas as Fortnum and Mason in London, and the Shelbourne Hotel in Dublin.  

Here from the Prince of Wales Menu:
Eggs Benedict on Toasted English Muffins with Traditional Hollandaise,
Poached Asparagus & Fried Tomatoes 
English Breakfast
Two Eggs, Bacon or Ham or Sausage, Sautéed Mushrooms,
Fried Tomatoes & Toast 
Buttermilk Pancakes
Tahitian Vanilla Butter & Maple Syrup 
Half of Red Grapefruit with Brown Sugar Brulee
Low Fat Yogurt & Berries 
Omega 3 Omelette
Fillings: Cheddar, Swiss, Goat’s Cheese
Peppers, Onion, Prosciutto, Asparagus, Tomato 
Smoked Salmon & Truffled Scrambled Egg
Sauce Hollandaise & Bagel “Chips” 
Stuffed French Toast
Housemade Milk Bread Stuffed with Sweet Vanilla Mascarpone
Toasted Pecan & Banana Caramel

Kelli Fox as Virginia Madden, Sharon Flett as Alice Madden. Shawfest photos by David and Emily Cooper.

Age of Arousal
Court House Theater
26 Queen St.
Capacity: 324 seats
2 pm
 When I hear the term, “inspired by” a previous work (e.g. The Wind Done Gone was inspired by Gone With the Wind) I cringe. I regard it as a total copout. In this case, Age of Arousal, written by Linda Griffiths is described as being wildly inspired by The Odd Women by George Gissing.  Now that’s refreshing! Gissing’s 1893 novel was obsessed with the curse of poverty in Victorian society. Griffiths takes a feminist slant. The aging Mary Barfoot (Donna Belleville) and her younger same-sex lover Rhoda Nunn (Jenny Young) open a secretarial school in the quixotic belief that teaching females typing skills can lead to gainful employment and personal independence for women. In this well-acted production, an unprepossessing Remington typewriter holds sway toward ultimate emancipation. Three other women enter the mix: a trio of unmarried sisters, each of whom faces her own complicated challenges. There is also the daunting presence of Mary's nephew (wonderfully played by Gray Powell), who becomes sexually involved with the most available of the three sisters, even as he becomes attracted on a more intellectual level to another. I was fascinated to learn about the man who invented the type-writer, Christopher Latham Sholes with itsunwieldy keyboard.I wondered as a youth why the configuration of the QWERTY letters.  That today’s speedier PC’s and MAC’s still maintain this anachronistic placement is puzzling. Correct me if I’m wrong, as I recall it, the placement of the letters on the earliest typewriters was governed by the requisite need to minimize having the most common combination of keys stick together. During WWII, the government commissioned a study to come up with the ideal placement of keys from among high-speed stenos, who had to unlearn the conventional placement with new ones that dramatically increased the proficiency of each typist. However the notion of teaching the secretarial populous of the advantages was as unsuccessful as getting the American public to accept the Metric System directly after the war. Much has been made of the script's continuous asides in which the characters address the audience and tell us, often explicitly, what they're really thinking. "Thoughtspeak" by the play's admirers -- is scarcely new. Shakespeare employed it four centuries ago.

Rick Reid as Matthew Haffigan, Thom Marriott as Father Dempsey, Guy Bannerman as Cornelius Doyle, Patrick McManus as Barney Doran, Benedict Campbell as Thom Broadbent.

 
Shaw’s John Bull’s Other Island
Court House Theater
8 pm
Written in 1904, this is Bernard Shaw’s only major play set in the country of his birth. It is less revered and less revived than most of his plays. Other than the title, I was patently unfamiliar with it. The Shaw Festival has done a great service to its audience and Shavian enthusiasts to mount such a beautifully realized comedy that is staged with aplomb and historical relevance by Christopher Newton. Three of its lead actors, Benedict Campbell as Tom Broadbent, Graem Somerville as Larry Doyle and Thom Marriott as Father Dempsey are as superlative as any performers I’ve seen in recent years  on any North American stage.   Act One opens in the London offices of Broadbent and Doyle, civil engineers. Tom Broadbent, very much the cheeky John Bull stock character who provided Ireland with the ample protective bosom of Brittania,  instructs his valet, Hodson, to pack their bags for Ireland. They are off  to Roscullen, Ireland  where Doyle was born, to develop land. Doyle has no illusions about Ireland while Broadbent is taken with the romance of the place. Broadbent, becomes a favorite of the local populous. In the process, he sets his sights on Nora Reilly (Severn Thompson), the woman back home waiting for his partner Doyle , who appears all too willing to benignly let her go. He becomes a candidate, for the intention of turning the village into a golf resort. Another important character is the defrocked priest Peter (Father) Keegan (Jim Mezon), the political and temperamental opposite of Broadbent, who sees through him from the beginning and warns the locals against him. The fine ensemble playing was a “tasting” for those goodies that would await us the next day:  Half an  Hour and The Doctor’s Dilemma.


Cow’s
44 Queen Street 
Niagara On The Lake
(905) 468-2100
Directly after viewing John Bull’s Other Island we sauntered along to a place that became our Time Out for Good Behavior oasis over the remaining time in Niagara on the lake. Cow’s is the inventor of the waffle cone, on to which I placed my order for fresh strawberry ice cream (among more than 30 varieties) with sprinkles. To a person who grew up in the ‘30s with such sundries as Melorols, Dixie Cups, Creamsicals and Double Dips, this was ice cream Valhalla.

 Day Five (Wednesday, August 18)

Michael Ball is Withers in “Half and Hour.”

J. M. Barrie’s
Half an Hour
Royal George Theater
85 Queen Street
Capacity: 324 seats
11:30 am
What a drop dead surprise! This lunchtime playlet was such an edge-of the-seat lark, it seemed as if the time rushed by in just one half hour. In fact that’s all it did take. The real-time direction by Gina Wilkinson was consummate, and the leading Lady Lillian was a stunner, an enchantress portrayed by Diana Donnelly whom I believe will be a star of the first magnitude. (I felt the same way about an unknown actress who played Katherine the Queen in a Central Park production of Henry V). Oh by the way, she went under the name of Meryl Streep. This polished theatrical gem was also notable for our first stage introduction to Michael Ball who played two minor but pivotal roles.

Leonard Elman’s Take: The title is literally accurate.  A neat little dramatic exercise bearing no similarity to Peter Pan.  An upper class English matron (Diana Donnelly), seemingly happily married to a stuffy but wealthy husband, has a young lover on the side. She and the lover plan to run away to Egypt.  The lover is accidentally killed before they can make their escape and before the husband discovers their plan. What does she do? I’ll never tell; see or read the show yourself. It’s worth the half an hour.

Michael Ball is Sir Patrick Cullen, Thom Marriott is Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonington and Patrick Galligan is Sir Colenso Ridgeon in “The Doctor’s Dilemma.

Interior Festival Theater.

Al Hirschfeld Wall, Festival Theater.

GBS’ The Doctor’s Dilemma
Festival Theater
10 Queen’s Parade
Capacity: 889
2 pm
In 1949 while a freshman in college, I saw a reading of Don Juan in Hell, the third act of Shaw’s Man and Superman, in a high school auditorium in Syracuse. In retrospect, it’s almost impossible to believe that such acting giants as Charles Laughton, Charles Boyer, Sir Cedric Hardwicke and Agnes Morehead pooled their talents. It was one of the most memorable theatrical evenings I’ve ever witnessed.  I would place Lerner and Loewe’s musical adaptation of Pygmalion and the Roundabout Theater’s production of Major Barbara with Cherry Jones in 2001 among the most extraordinary Shavian play I’ve witnessed. To these three theatricals, I will add this memorable Shaw Festival production of The Doctor’s Dilemma. Its enormously gifted ensemble acting cinched for me the superiority of this particular troupe vis-à-vis that of Stratford, Ont. I knew the plot well, since our own play group “staged” a reading in my apartment. That familiarity did not diminish my appreciation for this brilliant production, directed with panache by Morris Panych. Stand-outs from among the 12-person cast, were Patrick Galligan as Sir Colenso Ridgeon, Thom Marriott as Sir Ralph Bloomfield Bonington and Michael Ball as Sir Patrick Cullen.

Len Elman’s Take: Shaw takes on the medical establishment of Edwardian England.  Shaw wins. As he wrote in his interminable (92-page) preface to the play:
                        How any sane nation; having observed that you could provide for the supply of bread by giving bakers a pecuniary interest in baking for you, should go on to give a surgeon a pecuniary interest in cutting off your leg, is enough to make one despair of political humanity. . . (sound familiar?)

The play features five doctors, all of whom are, by our standards, dangerous quacks, but all but one of whom are financially quite successful. One of the five, recently knighted for discovering a “cure” for T.B. (of course, he really didn’t) is beseeched by a comely young woman to save her husband with his serum.  The doctor’s dilemma?  Should he use the precious serum (enough for only one person) to cure the lady’s husband, (a brilliant artist but, as it turns out, a total bounder) or to cure a worthy but poor doctor laboring among the poor of London. The dilemma within the dilemma?  You guessed it; the doctor covets the wife. What does he do? Read the play (skip the preface) (or see it, though it is rarely performed). Or go to Wikipedia. I ain’t talking. Incidentally, the performance we saw was extremely well done and highly professional.

Michael Ball on the stairwell of Niagara-on-the-Lake’s Festival Theater between performances of “Half an Hour” and “The Doctor’s Dilemma.” Photo: Hal Drucker

IN BALL’S COURT.
A Conversation with One of Canada’s Most Polished Actors.
By Hal Drucker (with Len Elman)
When Odette Yazbeck, public relations director of the Shaw Festival, suggested I interview Michael Ball, who has spent 31 years with the company, I confessed that his name did not register with me. Yet, I accepted her judgment as one of the keener observers of the Canadian theater scene.
 
A little digging on our part confirmed Ball’s standing as one of the most experienced Shavian actors of the English-speaking theater.  His long list of theater credits encompass more than 40 productions for the Shaw Festival since 1976.  

After having viewed two enormously entertaining entities during our visit to Niagara on the Lake in August, 2010, A Half Hour by J. M. Barrie, and Bernard Shaw’s A Doctor’s Dilemma, in which Mr. Ball had the pivotal roles respectively of Withers and Sir Patrick Cullen, I silently applauded Yazbeck’s astuteness. I was joined in the interview with inveterate theatergoer and friend Leonard Elman, who observed to Ball, “in the two  plays in which  we saw you, you appeared to be considerably older than you appear up close. How do you manage that?”

 “Well,” he said jovially, “as I get older, I find it easier to do older roles. As you know your body changes as you progress in years, so I try to take advantage of that.

“This production is the third of The Doctor’s Dilemma in which I’ve appeared,” he told us.  My favorite of Shaw’s plays is Arms and the Man, his lightest and his most accessible play.  As Major Petcoff, I was much too young for the play at the time, but I had an (ahem) ball doing it.“

I conceded that The Doctor’s Dilemma was up there with New York’s Roundabout Theater’s eloquent and funny production of Major Barbara, with Cherry Jones in the title role. Elman remembered with fondness the 1941 movie with Wendy Hiller as Major Barbara Undershaft and such luminaries as Rex Harrison, Robert Morley, Robert Newton, Dame Sybil Thorndike, Emlyn Williams, Stanley Holloway and Deborah Kerr.

Why haven’t we seen you do more in America. Is it by design?

“Funny that you ask,” he said. “As soon as this season finishes, I am going down to Pittsburgh to The Irish Classical Theater to play Hobson in Hobson’s Choice. “It’s a short gig; I’m only doing six weeks, but I’m dying to do the part again, having done it here in the mid ‘90s.

“As for my American theater experience, the first time I went down was 1976 to the Alley Theater in Houston, run at the time by Nina Vance who pioneered theater-in-the round down there. Then I went to Boston twice to the Huntington theater where we did an Irish play called The Steward of Christendom. That was the spring – but in the summer we did an adaptation of The Last Hurrah based on Mayor Michael James Curley of Boston. It was a movie directed by John Ford with Spencer Tracy as Curley, and started as a book by Edwin O’Connor. It was not a huge success as a play because the adaptation was very stiff. It was very hard to lift it off the page. Then I went to Milwaukee and did Shaw’s The Apple Cart at the Chamber Theater back in the late ‘90s, after which I did a play by Jeffrey Hatcher called Smash, which was based on a Shaw novella.”

“What or where was your first experience on any stage?”

“Well, it would have to be a school play; a Christmas thing. Angel # 3 – something like that. It definitely was in elementary school.”

A little after he was born in Ottawa in 1943, Ball’s family moved to the West Coast of Canada. “My dad was in the shipping business, so he was on-call every day. His job was to see that the tankers were loaded properly and well-balanced. It was a tough job and he next went into the small investment business in Greater Victoria on Vancouver Island. The man had crisp articulation which he used to advantage as an amateur puppeteer, during a summer gig at The Buchart Gardens with its famed floral displays.  He designed a little stage and was quite good at it. He made all his own puppets. Not marionettes, but ‘gloves.’   No, I never participated.”

At Oak Bay High School, did you encounter theater there?

“Well, they had no theater program but I was involved in the amateur theater guild in Victoria. The first play I did was The Wind in the Willows. I don’t sing. But I’ve been in a couple of rock musicals, including Christopher Newton’s: You Two Stay Here, the Rest Come with Me. It was a huge hit. The audience loved it. A troupe of young hippie theater artists, led by a mop-topped Englishman, created a groovy little folk-rock musical about the early history of Calgary. I did a little singing in it, but I don’t count myself as a singer at all.

What was the first movie you saw as a kid?

“We used to go to the Saturday matinees where you could see two movies for a quarter. The first movie I recall seeing was with Audie Murphy, America’s most decorated soldier in WWII.”

Was it “To Hell and Back?” which had Murphy playing himself? Or John Huston’s “The Red Badge of Courage” with another unlikely actor, Bill Mauldin, the WWII cartoonist who created “G.I. dogfaces” Willie and Joe?

“I probably saw all of Murphy’s work, but I can’t remember what specifically. It was most likely a western. He did over 40 movies, mostly Westerns.

“Watching movies are what made me want to be an actor.  Here were these big images which had the audience so rapt. The irony is that I never made a movie. Time’s running out it would seem,” he said with a laugh.

“I would have loved seeing you as Sheridan Whiteside in Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman’s ‘The Man Who Came to Dinner.’ Of course Monty Woolley in the original Broadway production must have been great fun. The film version with Woolley still breaks me up. I’ve seen people like Edward Everett Horton and Nathan Lane in the role but they were less than successful.”

“I never watch plays of movies before I perform in them. I do watch them afterwards. I don’t want to be influenced, I don’t want to hear the sounds and the way they read their lines in my head, so I don’t do that. 

“My favorite Canadian actors?   John Colicos, Leo Ciceri were world class, wonderful actors and now, they’re both gone.  

“But then of course there’s Chris Plummer. I met him in Stratford when I was still a kid. The first time I saw him was as Macbeth opposite Kate Reid as Lady M. in 1962. And the next time I saw him, he played Cyrano. He took your breath away – he was that brilliant.

Was that the musical version of Cyrano?

“Yes, the audience was on its feet at the end. I’ve never forgotten it. He was wonderful.”

Following a tryout in NY’s Colonial Theatre and five previews, the Broadway production, directed and choreographed by Michael Kidd, opened on May 13, 1973 at the Palace Theater, where it ran for just 49 performances. Besides Christopher Plummer as Cyrano, the cast included Leigh Beery as Roxana, and Mark Lamos as Christian, with Tovah Feldshuh making her Broadway debut in two small supporting roles. It was directed by Peter Coe.

What have you done of Shakespeare?

“I can’t remember the last time I did Shakespeare.”
 
I think you’re ready for Falstaff.

 “I’d have to grow out the beard.“

“In the late 90s I did Petruchio in The Taming of the Shrew, and we did Macbeth at the Warehouse, a smaller theater. I alternated as Banquo and Macbeth on succeeding nights and we had one Lady M., so she had to deal with two totally different Macbeths on succeeding nights. Yes, it’s his shortest play, but very tricky. It’s short because it was likely longer since he must have lost some of it.  There are weird transitions that are not explained in the text. “

Some of Ball’s most notable portrayals include his portrayal of the feeble butler Burrows in last season’s Ways of the Heart, Alderman Collins in Getting Married, The Count in The President, Dr. Sloper in The Heiress, John Rutherford in Rutherford and Son,  Jack Tanner in Man and Superman (1989), Dr Moriarty in Sherlock Holmes, Sir Colenso Ridgeon in The Doctor's Dilemma (1991) and Charles McFadden in Counsellor-at-Law.  He has played many leads at the Shaw Festival including the title role in The Admirable Crichton, Cauchon in Saint Joan, Pickering in Pygmalion, Schon in Lulu, The Madras House (1999), The Matchmaker (2000), Laura (2001), and Mr. Borden in Blood Relations (2003) by his former partner of 15 years, the playwright  Sharon Pollock with whom he has a daughter Amanda, a paramedic in Calgary.  

A graduate of the National Theatre School in 1964, Michael Ball has been gainfully employed as an actor ever since, enjoying leading roles at the Vancouver Playhouse, Manitoba Theater Center, Canadian Stage Company, Tarragon Theatre, Theater New Brunswick, Neptune Theater and the National Arts Center.
     
He resides in Niagara-on-the-Lake with his wife and fellow Ensemble member Wendy Thatcher, whom he met during the Shawfest's 1986 production of Cavalcade. They have no children together, and have since shared a stage, most memorably (we are told) in the 1990 production of Shaw’s Village Wooing at the Festival.

“I don’t consider myself a hot ticket. The phone’s not ringing off the hook. I don’t have an agent any more. But I do work for eight months at the Festival – leaving a narrow window for me to work somewhere else. That’s what’s so good about this Pittsburgh thing.”

"It's time something special was done on behalf of Michael Ball - such as declaring him a national treasure."

The words belong to the eminent Canadian critic Jamie Portman from Canwest News Service, who has been reviewing theater for half a century.
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Robin Evan Willis as Venus and Kyle Blair as Rodney Hatch.

Kurt Weill and Ogden Nash’s
One Touch of Venus
Royal George Theater 
85 Queen Street
8 pm

“Our summer day withers away, too soon, too soon.”

That bit of lyric penned by comic poet Ogden Nash for the one gorgeous Kurt Weill song, Speak Low, sums up my sense that this particular, youthfully earnest cast was distressingly off the mark.  Was it the fact that this was our third show of the day in nine hours? Or that the plot about the dis-arming goddess of love visiting Manhattan was so outdated it would lay waste to a Pitney-Bowes meter? All of the above: compounded by inept staging, muggable acting and primordial song delivery. I missed seeing the 1943 production whose book was by Nash and    S . J. Perelman who wrote many of the Marx Bros. scripts. It had that going for it plus Mary Martin and Kenny Baker in the lead roles. Len Elman, who is an aficionado of the minimalist Encore! series in New York suggests that the Shawfest stick to concert versions of obscure musical revivals. I agree and would suggest a revival of Rogers & Hammerstein’s most overlooked musical, Allegro.

Len Elman’s take: All that’s left are the songs,. (But they are formidable, Speak Low; I’m A Stranger Here Myself; Foolish Heart. Unfortunately, however, not as sung in this production.) And I also thought Venus was supposed to be a beauty.  Never saw the original production with Mary Martin and Kenny Baker.  Also missed the 1996 Encores production, featuring Melissa Errico, whom I understand was delicious in the lead.