Stage/Theatre

For many years now, Ontario’s Stratford Festival has tackled musicals with extreme consistency, combining athletic choreography with expensive design to concoct glitzy, family-friendly respites from its heftier lineup of classics. That record of success continues this year with two impressive productions: first, Something Rotten! at the Festival Theatre, a sublime send-up of Shakespeare that feels almost too appropriate at Stratford; second, La Cage aux Folles at the Avon, a less perfect selection of material nonetheless given a spirited staging.

Mark Uhre as Nick Bottom with members of the company in ‘Something Rotten!’ (Photo Ann Baggley)

What: Something Rotten!
Where: Stratford’s Festival Theatre, 55 Queen St.
When: Now, until Sun., Oct. 27
Highlight: Director-choreographer Donna Feore’s self-referential take on A Musical
Rating: NNNNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: It’s a dazzling, audience-pleasing theatrical event the Festival could remount any year.

With Something Rotten!, the Stratford Festival gets the opportunity to laugh at itself. The 2015 musical comedy by John O’Farrell and Karey Kirkpatrick pokes fun at many things associated with the company, including Shakespeare, musicals and overpriced intermission wine. Directed and choreographed with alacrity by Donna Feore, the silly script transforms into a dazzling, audience-pleasing theatrical event the festival could remount any year.

Set in Renaissance London, the show centres on Nick Bottom (Mark Uhre), the leader of an uninspired acting troupe that looks particularly mediocre next to a chap named William Shakespeare (Jeff Lillico), recently launched to rockstar status by the success of his new tragedy, Romeo and Juliet. Nick, jealous of the Bard’s success, heads over to a local soothsayer (Dan Chameroy) to find out the next big trend in theatre. He receives a remarkably accurate response: musicals! His next, tougher task is to find a story and produce a hit with his sweet business partner Nigel (Henry Firmston), who knows nothing of Nick’s plagiaristic activities.

Feore in turn gets to practise some self-plagiarism in the soothsayer’s ecstatic early showstopper A Musical. After Chameroy’s grizzly salesman details the key traits of musicals, a many-minute dance break ensues, complete with references to the director-choreographer’s past shows on the festival stage, from the gamblers of Guys and Dolls to the “whatayatalk” of The Music Man. And while, in theory, it might be dangerous for the best song to arrive so early (what other musical does that?), it works here; the number’s high degree of playfulness encourages everything that follows to become even bigger, funnier and more stylized.

Producing this show at Stratford means the Shakespearean content has the potential to come off as pandering — but this extraordinary production clicks so fully that the script’s endless references to the playwright feel like part of the package, not the whole thing. Michael Gianfrancesco’s hundreds of detailed costumes, Uhre’s disgruntled body language, Bonnie Beecher’s tactile lighting, Laura Burton’s sprightly music direction: they all mix to create a humorous but strangely heartfelt love letter to theatre.

Members of the company in ‘La Cage aux Folles’ (Photo David Hou)

What: La Cage aux Folles
Where: Stratford’s Avon Theatre, 99 Downie St.
When: Now, until Sat., Oct. 26
Highlight: Chris Vergara’s energetic performance as maid/butler Jacob
Rating: NNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: Director Thom Allison renders the show’s central relationship with care.

Likely realizing it’s difficult to out-musical-comedy Something Rotten!, director Thom Allison is careful to foreground the tender central relationship of La Cage aux Folles, Jerry Herman and Harvey Fierstein’s Tony Award-winning 1983 musical.

Adapted from the novel by Jean Poiret, La Cage aux Folles unfolds at a French nightclub owned by Georges (Sean Arbuckle), who lives upstairs with his husband Albin (Steve Ross). Most nights, Georges plays MC, introducing Albin’s performances as drag queen Zaza. But when Jean-Michel (James Daly), the couple’s son, announces he’s marrying the daughter (Heather Kosik) of a notoriously homophobic conservative politician (Juan Chioran), it suddenly becomes not most nights. Jean-Michel invites them for dinner with the stipulation that Albin can’t be in attendance because his body language is too obviously gay, igniting the show’s conflict.

Arbuckle brings a potent stateliness to Georges, often saddled with the difficult task of mediating between Albin and Jean-Michel, the two people he loves most. And it’s especially wonderful to see Stratford vet Ross, usually a character actor, in a starring role — perhaps his background as a supporting player is why he seems to play down the character’s love of attention (unlike the incandescent Chris Vergara, who, as the couple’s maid/butler, delivers the majority of his lines directly to the audience, inciting much applause).

Yet for all the weight of the central performances, I find Allison’s production lacking a degree of specificity. Despite the shiny dance numbers, buoyed by Cameron Carver’s strong choreography, the production doesn’t do much to give us an idea of the club’s atmosphere, never mind the world outside it. The light bulb frame around Brandon Kleiman’s set has the tendency to imbue the space with an oddly generalized aura more appropriate for a musical revue than a period piece. (David Boechler’s stellar costumes do something to counterpoint this notion.) Considering the material itself is beginning to grey, these injections of vagueness can make it difficult to make out the ideas motivating this entertaining production.