I loved Verne Thiessen & Yvette Nolan’s adaptation of the Margaret Laurence novel The Diviners, creatively and energetically directed by Krista Jackson with Geneviève Pelletier, but the rest of the straight plays in the 2024 Stratford season left me somewhere on a sliding scale of cold.

 

The remaining plays (meaning not Shakespeare, not musicals, not The Diviners) fall into two fairly distinct camps. On the Modern Drama side, the most successful is Salesman in China, a big ticket world premiere that’s seen the festival go all-in in a way they haven’t in years. The massive marketing push matches the higher than average production standards and it’s nice to see Stratford swing for the fences with a project that will surely have at least a second life and therefore carry the festival’s reputation beyond the city. Co-written by Leanna Brodie and Jovanni Sy, the script itself is a little clunky, taking a stand to make nuanced points then moving on to the next pressing issue without compounding the pressure from each conflict. The ending also extends far too long, undermining the catharsis of the moment Adrian Pang’s immensely compelling leading man finally steps into the play within the play. Pang’s performance is the heart and soul of Salesman in China and, along with a fabulous supporting turn from the reliable Phoebe Hu, his work is worth the price of admission. Though not every element of this highly lauded drama worked as well for me as I’d hoped, I appreciate a thoughtful gamble and the resources with which the festival has backed up the bet.

 

The season’s other world premiere gets a little lost in the hubbub despite also boosting the festival’s multicultural presence and attracting standout new talent. Andrea Scott’s Get That Hope suffers from a lack of story beats. Packed with ideas, themes, and complicated interpersonal relationships, a lack of plot makes the short show (just an hour forty including a twenty minute intermission) feel long and forces the characters into directly voicing their every feeling rather than letting resentments simmer unspoken. Savion Roach and Kim Roberts give wonderful understated performances at the play’s centre but Jennifer Villaverde’s theatricality feels forced in the naturalistic environment.

 

Edward Albee’s The Goat or, Who is Sylvia? is the season’s lone modern drama featuring an established text. Albee’s absurdity is not my style but Rick Roberts’ full buy-in sells the ridiculous story. Unfortunately the rising stakes and intensity of the production never really take off as the polite, pristine scene (embodied beautifully by designer Shawn Kerwin’s excellent set and costumes) is deconstructed too carefully. The always too practiced Lucy Peacock never lets a lovely hair out of place as she gracefully smashes props into suspiciously clean pieces. Even within the play’s uncomfortable premise, the audience is allowed to feel far too comfortable.

 

But it’s the classics where things really go off the rails. Dion Boucicault’s London Assurance is stupid but executed fine with a second act that’s refreshingly slightly less cruel than act one’s ‘ridicule the fop’ premise promises. Geraint Wyn Davies is tired in yet another bumbling proud man role and Emilio Vieira’s Richard Dazzle fails to dazzle but Austin Eckert and Marissa Orjalo are bright and energetic as the young lovers and Deborah Hay is in fine form as the absurd Lady Gay Spanker, adding a key wink of wisdom to the whole silly affair.

 

Patrick Marber’s new version of Ibsen’s iconic Hedda Gabler on the other hand fails to elevate the original. Staged with a beautiful eye but lack of nerve, designer Kaleigh Krysztofiak’s lighting is able to steal the show from Sara Topham’s too tight Hedda. Like many productions this season, there’s a distinct lack of heat here which hinders the immediacy of Hedda’s trapped circumstances. She seems merely bored, and so are we.

 

And so we come to the worst- Wendy & Peter Pan. I truly do not want to dwell (I really did like The Diviners!) but this dreadful adaptation is the real capper to an overall pretty weak season. As though unaware of the aching sadness at the centre of JM Barrie’s original, adapter Ella Hickson adds material to make the story more explicitly sad while also completely eliminating subtext. Especially through the dull yet cartoonish take on Tink, the dialogue in this children’s play is explicitly mean (in a way kids are very likely to imitate) and Thomas Morgan Jones’ direction captures none of the imagination-fuelled magic of lower fi versions. Laura Condlln is, naturally, a stellar Hook who ably layers key sadness in with delicious malice (the goofy fun kind, not the snarky kind) and James Daly carves out a few laughs as the worst pirate on the crew but there’s little else to praise aside from Marcus Nance’s very cool crocodile. It seems as though the cast has all received wildly different direction that ranges from deadpan to manic and nothing coheres into anything halfway moving or even all that fun. I often struggle with Stratford’s children’s programming but this is the worst it’s been.

 

After a truly killer 2023, it’s disappointing to see so few hits from Stratford this year but, with the 2025 lineup already in the works, I’m hoping this is a temporary darkness led by uneven focus on key productions rather than overall season strength.