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This Season at Stratford

Framed as a Memory Play

Kanagawa’s 2023 adaptation is framed as a memory play, introduced by Ralph and Mitsue in fourth wall-breaking addresses at the top of the show’s two acts. It’s an interesting narrative device that I was disappointed not to see satisfyingly resolved at the end of the play…

The production’s synergy between design and staging is its strongest point — Kaileigh Krysztofiak’s lighting, Chien’s projections, Anita Nittoly’s fight direction, and Stephanie Graham’s choreography combine to create intense combat sequences. The incorporation of historic radio broadcasts and images during depictions of some of the war’s most pivotal events, like the attack on Pearl Harbor, illustrate the intensely felt impacts of this well-known history on the play’s characters. Sound designer Olivia Wheeler and composer Allison Lynch’s soundscapes and cinematic scoring also lend much emotional weight to the play’s many settings.

Stratford Festival
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Just Plain Long

But Daryl Cloran’s production – though playful, charming and uniformly well-acted – feels nearly as long as the wait for the next season of Netflix’s faux-historical romance. At just under three hours, the show’s length might be a coup for the most devout fans of Jane Austen, book lovers eager to be immersed for as long as possible in the well-mannered finery of early-1800s England…

But for the rest of us, the production is just plain long…

Jessica B. Hill and Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane are marvellous as Elinor and Marianne, sunny and bright in their deeply felt sisterhood. Andrew Chown and Thomas Duplessie, too, are terrific as suitors John Willoughby and Edward Ferrars, respectively. (Jade V. Robinson is also excellent as little sister Margaret.)..

But despite the commendable work happening both onstage and off, even the most inspired of vignettes isn’t enough to keep Hamill’s script from feeling a touch stale.