Missing Stratford

All week in my Facebook "Memories" I have been seeing pictures of Stratford, Ontario (like the one above from 2017--the city hall). And each day I feel--what?--wistfulness? despair? (nah) when I realize that those wonderful weeks Joyce and I spent up there from 2001-2017 can be no more.

And what were we doing there?

The Stratford Theatre Festival (used to be called the Stratford Shakespeare Festival).

The first week in August we would drive up there (via Detroit/Windsor or Niagara Falls), stay in our favorite room, almost always at the Mercer Hall Inn right on the main street (see pic at the bottom of this post). We would leave home on late Monday morning, arriving late afternoon (no plays on Mondays), park our car in the Mercer Hall lot, and not drive again until we left for home on Sunday afternoon (after the final matinee of the week).

While we were there, our main business, of course, was to see plays--eleven in six days (four by the Bard each season--usually). The theaters--all within walking distance--were very different, each from the other. The Studio, The Festival, The Avon, the Tom Patterson--each gave the audience a different way to see a play--from close-up-and-intimate (Studio) to traditional (Avon) to arena (Tom Patterson) to one resembling the Shakespeare Globe (but with no room for groundlings!).

We saw virtually all of Shakespeare's plays there (not all--we had to catch some others, like Richard II, at other venues here and there), but we also saw American classics (by Tennessee Williams), English classics (by Coward and Wilde), new plays by Canadian playwrights, experimental things by some international playwrights (Beckett, Sartre). One of my favorites (of the experimental type) was a version of Moby-Dick: no words spoken until the very end--just movements and music, the final and only words being "Call me Ishmael." It was a dazzler.

We also loved the town of Stratford. We had some favorite coffee shops and restaurants, bookstores (there were quite a few of them--from second-hand to newbies). We both loved a kitchen store, where I bought, over the years, a bunch of bread-making devices and other things. Joyce loved all of that + some stores where we bought gifts for family, gifts to distribute throughout the year.

There were, of course, some "Shakespeare shops," where I bought things I would use with my classes back at Western Reserve Academy (where I taught Hamlet for a decade). And speaking of that play: One year, at the Festival Theatre, we saw a production. The melancholy Dane was as far downstage as he could get, center, doing "To be." In the middle of it, a cell phone rang, right in front of him (not six feet away). The woman scrambled in her purse to find the phone and shut it off--Hamlet just sank his head and waited (growing ever more melancholy, I would guess), then, when the silence finally came, continued with the world's most famous monologue. As if nothing untoward had happened. (As Hamlet himself says--his final words in the play--"The rest is silence.")

We saw the actors on the streets, in the coffee shops, the restaurants, and that was always a thrill, too. I spoke to a few of them (in appreciation, of course), and they were invariably gracious.

But ... no more. Time's winged chariot and all ... There is really no way I could now do that walking, see two major play productions a day ...

Every fall Joyce and I think about it (you need to reserve a room downtown about a year in advance), but we both know it's impossible.

But ... there are those fantastic memories--sitting in the dark with Joyce--hearing those wondrous words coming from the mouths of some spectacular performers--and talking, talking, talking with Joyce afterwards ... and all the way home ... and, I hope, until my final breath ...

Mercer Hall Inn, 2016