I
spent last weekend in Stratford, Ontario, at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival
with TLC. She’s been taking me there ever since I was a wee thing of eleven,
and that’s a huge part of what sparked my deep love of theatre, particularly of
the classical variety. We saw five shows: Henry V, Much Ado About Nothing,
Cymbeline, The Pirates of Penzance, and Elektra. I’ll blog a bit about the
shows themselves later.
The
trip afforded me a chance to see one of my favorite-ever people, Craig:
certified tall person, Lord Byron look-alike, and former London denizen. He
drove up from Toronto to see me, and he escorted me to Henry V. He’s one of the
cleverest, warmest and funniest men I know, and I see him so infrequently that
the little time we get together is terribly precious to me.
“I
have a friend who got her MA in Publishing in England,” Craig told me. “She’s
back in Toronto now. She works at one of the biggest literary agencies in the
country.”
“Oh
lovely! I think I’d like to be a literary agent,” I said. “I’m not sure what
I’m going to do with my degree yet, but I’d really love to get the chance to
crush people’s dreams and being an agent would let me do that. Literary agent,
or maybe pediatric oncologist, but that would take too much extra school.” He
laughed. This man laughs at my jokes about cancer-stricken children. I’ll never
find another man like him.
Of
course, in addition to outstanding theatre, Stratford also boasts a number of
superb restaurants, so I dove head-first into the town’s gustatory delights. It
was a weekend full of wine and cappuccinos, pastas, pastries, local-vegetable
salads and crème brulees. I gained three pounds. I don’t even feel bad about
it. I didn’t have an unpleasant mouthful all weekend.
This
season marked the return to the Festival of one of my favorite actors, Graham
Abbey. He was in the first production I saw at the Festival – he played William
Roper in A Man For All Seasons. He was just a kid then, in his mid-twenties,
tall and puppyishly cute. In the decade and a half since, I’ve watched him turn
into a truly astoundingly effective performer. He speaks verse like he was born
to do it – he tears through it neck-breakingly fast and yet it’s sharp, clear,
perfectly understandable and deeply affecting. He was in the last performance I
saw this weekend, playing Aegisthus in Elektra.
 |
| I love this man, and don't even act like you blame me. |
Going
to Stratford with my mother and grandmother in 1998 made me feel very grown-up.
I wasn’t even a teenager, so I still had a lot of growing to do, but that
experience was hugely defining to who I would be as an adult. Graham Abbey was
my first proper grown-up celebrity crush, and I am so pleased that one of his
performances was my introduction to the Stratford Festival and grown-up life,
and another was my last hurrah before I pack up my life here and move across
the Atlantic. I’ve only spoken to him once (and briefly at that, at stage door
seven or eight years ago), but the gentleman has been a very important part of
my life. Thanks, Mr. Abbey. You’ve meant so much to me.
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