"Sharp Wit and Noble Scenes": A Review of the 1961 Season of the Stratford, Ontario, Festival

Abstract

HE i96i season at Stratford, Ontario had a great deal to commend it. It gave Paul Scofield his North American debut, it showed Michael Langham at his most adventurous, it included a contemporary play for the first time, and it ran longer than any previous season. It is a thing of the past to find some neat 10 tphrase to sum up the season: is now on the map or is making its presence felt are expressions of excitement that belong to various other years. Now it is a matter of whether a particular season enhanced or damaged the festival's good name, and in these terms i96i is easily assessed, for it did nothing but good for Stratford's reputation, to say nothing of Shakespeare's. The company may well have dispersed with the humbly proud conviction that they have few rivals worthy of the name. There was, though, an inauspicious beginning to events. Before the opening night the publicity boys had to sell to a public that is only just beginning to get used to the idea of going to the theater in the summer, a star and three plays that they had never heard of. If bringing Paul Scofield to Stratford was a risk on Mr. Langham's part it was a calculated risk, for the actor's great reputation in Britain was richly deserved. It was reasonable to expect that the intelligence and art that lay behind it would be just as much appreciated here. But offering a repertory of Coriolanus, Henry VIII and Love's Labour's Lost was a risk of a different sort. In the end it all paid off; the plays received reviews that were, with few exceptions, warm and enthusiastic, they played to the largest audience in the festival's history and both Paul Scofield and Douglas Campbell followed successful seasons at Stratford with triumphant debuts on Broadway. It seems to add up to just another chapter in the success story, but it must be acknowledged that it might have been otherwise. There are festivals that have been successful by accident, and there is one that is an annual success in spite of itself, but Stratford, Ontario, cannot rely on fortune or momentum. There was nothing accidental about the i96i festival: Mr. Langham had built his season as he builds his productions, with the art that conceals art. Nowhere were his gifts more in evidence than in Love's Labour's Lost: this was a matchless production, sensitive, gay and intelligent, and it must confirm Mr. Langham as a director of Shakesperian comedy without equal. So much care, so much inspiration, so many felicitous ideas had gone into this production that it must have been for many people a jewel of an experience. One emi-