Stratford Festival 2009, part 2

We saw the third play in our set at Stratford today: Phèdre by Jean Racine. This 17th century play has some of the same barriers to overcome as Bartholomew Fair, since the courtly context of the original audience is distant from modern experience. A bigger barrier is language: what words in modern English offer an analog to Racine's powerful French? Phrases that seem eloquent in the original seem overwrought in contemporary English usage. I nearly laughed out loud at the choice of words in one very earnest scene. I wish they had done the performance in French with English supertitles. This is Canada. French is an official language!

The performance almost overcame the language problem, and might really have succeeded if the performance of Phèdre herself had more poise and fewer hysterics. We agreed that if Phèdre had held herself as a person whose bearing bespoke authority the way Aricie did in her final scene with Theseus, then the play would have had more punch. It was not bad, but in the end it was not convincing. ... Phèdre is a tragedy, of course, but during this performance I half expected one last scene where, Thèraméne confesses in the manner of many Shakespeare comedies that his story about Hyppolitus' death was a fabrication to show Theseus his error, and Hyppolitus and Aricie marry and live happily ever after.

Our ranking for the plays we saw this season: 1) Three Sisters (an excellent play done well), 2) Bartholomew Fair (a difficult play made almost accessible by good staging), 3) Phèdre (decent but unconvincing English version of a French classic).