Shakespeare and Stratford

No, I didn't spend the weekend with the great bard. For those of you who don't live in Canada, it may surprise you to learn that we have a town in Southern Ontario called Stratford. Next to Stratford, is the town of Shakespeare. Why do I care? Because every year, Stratford puts on a theatre festival called, with typical Canadian originality, The Stratford Festival. It is also where Nyron and I make our annual (2 hour) pilgrimage for some fine theatre. This year it was for Stephen Sondheim's Into the Woods and Noel Coward's Fallen Angels. Into the Woods I really enjoyed. The set was imaginative and there was a great use of light, colour and video projection. The play itself held its own and, of course, Sondheim is a great composer and lyricist. I would recommend it to anyone. Fallen angels didn't impress me as much. The humour was there, but there wasn't much else to speak for it.

Shakespeare is a very small town and the only reason one wouldn't just drive through on their way to the Stratford Festival is because it has some great little antique shops and other such quaint temptations. One particular stop we wanted to make was the Antique Warehouse which we had missed last year because of it's 6:oo close time. It was most definitely worth the wait. The place is a huge labyrinthine collaboration of shelves and display cases holding copious amounts of miscellany. Heaven. I walked away with a really cute S&P shaker set of little mice popping out of melons and 10 vintage Nursery Rhyme Wade figures. Nyron was probably the big winner here, as he bought (discovered by me!) a signed hardcover first edition of Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman.

Culture and consumerism was had by all. : )

o( )__