A Tale of Two Festivals

EVA RESNIKOVA has been writing in these pages of the sad state of Broadway and the gladder state of Off Broadway; but there is even better news farther off Broadway—namely, at the summer theater festivals. Two of the best are outside our borders but well within reach of the Northeast and upper Midwest: the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, both located on that arrowhead of southern Ontario that pokes down between Buffalo and Detroit.

Reviews of urban theater concentrate, it goes without saying, on the play. But ambiance is part of the point at festivals. When Clive Barnes was the New York Times’s chief reviewer in the early Seventies, he would always begin his first Stratford piece of the season with a brooding assessment of the town’s unintended value as a diet spa. Then came the year when, under a new artistic director, Robin Phillips, Stratford perked up. Barnes led off his review not with, Finally, a good Hamlet\ but with, Finally, a decent restaurant! Phillips has since departed, but several more than decent restaurants have come and stayed.

About the Author

Linda Bridges

Ms. Bridges is the former editor-at-large of National Review.

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EVA RESNIKOVA has been writing in these pages of the sad state of Broadway and the gladder state of Off Broadway; but there is even better news farther off Broadway—namely, at the summer theater festivals. Two of the best are outside our borders but well within reach of the Northeast and upper Midwest: the Stratford Shakespeare Festival and the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, both located on that arrowhead of southern Ontario that pokes down between Buffalo and Detroit.

Reviews of urban theater concentrate, it goes without saying, on the play. But ambiance is part of the point at festivals. When Clive Barnes was the New York Times’s chief reviewer in the early Seventies, he would always begin his first Stratford piece of the season with a brooding assessment of the town’s unintended value as a diet spa. Then came the year when, under a new artistic director, Robin Phillips, Stratford perked up. Barnes led off his review not with, Finally, a good Hamlet\ but with, Finally, a decent restaurant! Phillips has since departed, but several more than decent restaurants have come and stayed.