Stratford 2012 Archives - Capital Critics' Circle / Le cercle des critiques de la capitale

Sophocles and Christopher Plummer celebrate the power of language.

By Jamie Portman | August 15, 2012

Postmedia News, The Ottawa Citizen. Photo: David Hou

STRATFORD, Ont. • In one theatre, we have Christopher Plummer reminiscing about the writings that have nurtured and inspired him through 82 years of life.

A few blocks away, in another venue, we have the 2,400-year-old Sophocles tragedy Elektra, reasserting its timelessness in a production with astonishing fusion of sight and sound that should even convert those who profess to hate classical Greek theatre.

It’s an interesting pairing for the Stratford Shakespeare Festival’s August openings — two offerings that may seem poles apart in sensibility. But there is a link between Plummer’s elegantly witty one-man show and Sophocles’s blood-soaked saga of family carnage.

Both events celebrate the power of language.

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This uncanny one-man show is as strikingly insightful production of Hirsch

By Jamie Portman | July 20, 2012

STRATFORD, Ont. – The Stratford Festival has boldly premiered three new works for its July round of openings _ but with mixed results.One, a potentially exciting musical about Klondike poet Robert W. Service, is a damp disappointment. Another reveals a fine Canadian playwright merely marking time. The third offering, a one-man show called Hirsch, is a triumph.

Yet, how many theatergoers will even recognize the name of Canadian theatre icon John Hirsch? Well, even if they don`t they`ll quickly realize they`re in the presence of an arresting personality _ the sort of man who will demolish an enemy with the lofty declaration that “your intellect is nothing compared to my intellect .

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