Sunday morning in Stratford...

Sunday morning in Stratford: we awoke to cool weather, and rain. Since it was blisteringly hot on Friday and not much cooler yesterday, this was a bit of a relief, though I should perhaps have packed something besides one light jacket with long sleeves.

No matter. I'm thinking of trying the candidiasis diet for a week; not easy, but maybe worth it, just to alleviate annoying symptoms.

We've been sharing the Festival Inn with a horde of soccer players. When the receptionist told us that there were soccer teams staying at the hotel, my first mental image was of brawny Brazilian men in shorts. Alas, these soccer players are a different breed: soft Canadian boys, average age about 11, who make a lot of noise at the pool, while their parents, as far as we could tell, spent three days eating and drinking at the picnic table in front of their hotel rooms. Everyone seemed to be having a good time.

I'm now at the computer in the lobby, which brings back memories of Chicago a few weeks ago. I love this Internet age, where you can find computers in most hotels. I wonder if it will be as easy in England?

I have been making a number of Resolutions. Can I do this? How disciplined can I be? (You are forbidden to laugh at that question...!)

Shakespeare`s Julius Caesar...

A few comments on Shakespeare's Julius Caesr, which I saw yesterday afternoon. Caesar was played (with panache) by Geraint Wynne Davies; Brutus by Ben Carlson; Antony by Jonathan Goad; Cassius by Tom Rooney.

Of those, I thought Rooney and Goad stood out. We saw Goad last year as Professor Harold Hill in The Music Man, and he was great then, too. maaseru commented, "He has the leading man look." Lots of power and presence. And though I never thought about the similarities before, there is a lot that Shakespeare's Marc Antony and Wilson's Harold Hill have in common: they have golden tongues and an admirable style, they make people love them, they're sympathetic heroes, and they lie eloquently for their cause. They use strategy - and prevarication - as a weapon and a tool, and are still, essentially, heroes.

Rooney as Cassius was lean and hungry enough, with a sort of focussed intesnity that made me make parallels in my mind between Cassius and Iago and Lady Macbeth. The last Cassius who stands out in my mind was Colm Feore, the first time I saw him - his performance was stunning, and put the performances of the other actors in the shade. Not so Rooney: he fit in perfectly and convincingly. I usually think of Brutus in Caesar as a bit of a stubborn dupe: once convinced, too committed to back down, whether he really wants to kill Caesar or not.

I find Shakespeare's Caesar delightfully ambiguous, though it`s a treat to see one of my favourites looking at one of my favourite historical figures. Is Shakespeare`s Caesar a vainglorious triumpator setting himself up as a monarch? Or is he a benign statesman, destroyed by his countrymen's fear of tyranny? Shakespeare never clearly answers the question, so a lot of it it's in the direction. In this production, twentieth-century style images, and Caesar's luxurious costuming (which evoke the concept of an eastern potentate), maybe imply that he was setting himself up through personal ambition, and yet his love of his friends and the people seems sincere enough. Geraint Wynne Davies didn't answer the question for us: and I found his performance more show than substance. Which is, perhaps, just what Shakespeare would have wanted.

Still. I like a strong, sharp, cunning Caesar, good or bad, and that isn't what we get here. As in most performances of Julius Caesar I've seen, Caesar is far eclipsed by the stronger characters of Brutus and Antony.

I was not terribly impessed by Ben Carlson as Hamlet, and not much impressed with his performance as Brutus here. It takes a lot to make me sympathetic to Brutus; as the text goes, his obsession with honour looks more like narcissism than Caesar's obsession with power. And yes, and yet, in act two, I became actually sympathetic to Brutus in this production, and his focus breaks down under the pressures of war - but not his courage.

I loved the reappearances of Caesar's ghost.

And I loved Dion Johnstone as Octavius Caesar. My first thought - when he appeared in a rather severe 20th-century-style military uniform - was that he looked like a Vulcan. Seconds later he raised his right hand in a salute, plam out - no, he didn't spread his fingers in a Vulcan salute, but it was the next best thing.

Good costume: rag-bag costuming, as if they took and combined all the costumes of various eras in one show. And oddly, it (mostly) worked - I especially liked the replendent robe that Caesar wore at home with Calpurnia, black with golden dragon embroidered over it. Gorgeous. It seems that everyone in Caesar's family was black except himself - that was fun, too.

Good sets, oversized marble columns, with crumbled to ruin in the battle scenes like moments out of T.S. Eliot.

Sunday night...

I'm still in Stratford.

Today we saw Macbeth with Colm Feore in the lead, Geraint Wynne Davies as Duncan, and Dion Johnstone (whom I now know to particularly look for) as a quite wonderful Macduff. I thought the staging was wonderful - great use of sound and light, and the witches' cauldron was magnificent. Also good use of video to give the effect of Macbeth in his fortress, using a sort of Big Brother surveillance on security cameras, yet giving the impression of himself as the prisoner of his own paranoia - claustrophobic, hypervigilent, desperate. I also loved Tom Rooney as the Porter.

The problem with dressing most of the cast in modern Canadian military uniforms is that it makes the characters harder than ever to tell apart.

I went for a couple of walks. Stratford is a lovely city to walk in. Didn't get to stroll along the Avon feeding the swans, as I'd half hoped, because of the rain. Maybe if I'm quick and early tomorrow morning, I'll still have a chance.

After the play today: more shopping, more books. I swear I will never overspend on books again. But oh so very worth it... after supper I was reading, not one of the books I got, but one maaseru got - How To Read Literature Like a Professor by Thomas C. Foster, which is a delightful read. I'm not sure he says anything I don't already know, and he says some things I think are not true (for instance, Vergil did not come 'immediately after' Homer - there was 800 years between them) - but his style is loads of fun to read. I keep reading choice passages aloud to maaseru, sometimes because they're amusing, sometimes because I'm appalled. (This man likes Faulkner, for example. Yerch.)

Late evening, we went back to Foster's Inn on Downie Street for dessert, and I had their delightful Vanilla Bean Crème Brulée, which was as good as I could possibly have hoped.

It rained today, but that relieved the heat, and it was a beautiful evening. The rain gave maaseru the excuse to buy a wonderful big umbrella with pictures of Shakespeare on it.