ALEXANDER LEGGATT

To write the history of the Stratford Festival demands a complex juggling act. There are, first of all, the productions themselves, the point of the whole enterprise. But the story of Stratford is also the story of an institution, and that means administrative and economic problems, the careers and personalities of individuals, and - in the special case of Stratford - some understanding of the unlikely town and the frequently hostile country in which the Festival grew, flourished and in 1980 very nearly died. The first thing that should be said about the present history is that it gives a sharp, clear and frequently vivid account of all these issues. It has the virtues of good journalism: a smart pace, an eye for telling detail, and an ability to summarize issues briskly but fairly. The work was begun by John Pettigrew, who died in 1977, and finished by Jamie Portman; it is Pettigrew's till 1972, Portman working on Pettigrew's material till 1976, and Portman alone from 1977. Yet with a few minor exceptions its texture is so smooth and its style so consistent that if one did not know otherwise one would assume it to be the work of a single author.

For the most part this is a year-by-year chronicle, slowing down twice to explore more fully the two most extraordinary periods in the Festival's history: its founding and its near-destruction after the resignation of Robin Phillips. There are descriptions, sometimes several paragraphs long, of each Festival Theatre production and most Avon Theatre productions. As the Festival's activities expand into music and film a certain diffuseness creeps into the narrative; there is just too much to write about, and we see the problem of successive artistic directors who found there was too much to control. Statistics are scattered throughout like small hard rocks: box-office percentages and receipts, ticket amounts raised and donated, prices and salaries. In 1962, we are told, the Accommodation Department booked 28,953 people into private houses and 13,576 into hotels and motels (I, 165). But readers whose eyes (like mine) glaze over at such knowledge are amply rewarded elsewhere. Some of the technical details are evocative. When the new theatre was being built, 'Before any concrete was poured, a 1¼ - inch finishing nail was driven into the stage at the middle of the point where the [central] pillar stood (and still stands), and this was the datum point from which all measurements were made' (I, 127). By contrast, when the Avon was renovated it was discovered that 'the entire left proscenium rested on one concrete tile less than six inches thick' (I, 166). But perhaps the most revealing story comes from the first season, a small parable showing how powerfully, and by what means, the theatre works on its audience. Vincent Massey so admired Richard III's coronation orb that it was presented to him: 'One wonders at what point he learned it was made from a toilet-tank float' (I, 6).

The details are not always reliable, and at this level serious students of the theatre will have to use the book with caution. (They will also be bothered by the lack of footnoting and the occasional coyness about naming sources.) For example, it was Eric Christmas, not William Hutt, who played Feste in David William's Twelfth Night (II, 174). There is a bad muddle over which Festival Theatre production scored the lowest at the box-office. Pettigrew states that the 1966 Henry VI tied with Lorenzaccio as the lowest 'in the Festival Theatre's history,' giving the figure as 57% (I, 185-6). But he later gives the figure for Lorenzaccio as 53% (II, 30) and Portman, for once without reference to Pettigrew, gives the figure for the 1979 2 Henry IV as 47.5% (II, 157). But if the book is wobbly at moments like these it is strong where it matters most, in its account of the quality and critical reception of the productions, a tricky business which both writers handle with great skill. They give balanced surveys of critical opinions (including in many cases their own) and in the process give evidence that the Festival has inspired some sensitive and colourful reviews. (It has also inspired reviews of other kinds, but they do not figure largely here.) In each case there is a final judgement, sometimes surprising: Tamburlaine and Troilus and Cressida, for example, ranked higher than conventional wisdom allowed at the time. Frequently a longer view is allowed to counter first-night impressions left by the critics: we are told, for example, of the steady improvement in James Mason's Angelo and in Stuart Burge's production of Richard II; conversely, Michael Langham's King Lear, it seems, was never again as good as on opening night. Theatregoers checking their own memories are bound to pick some quarrels: I would not agree, for example, that Christopher Plummer failed as Mercutio (I, 146) nor can I understand Portman's enthusiasm for Peter Moss's listless Henry IV productions (II, 156-7). But such disagreements are inevitable, and on the whole this part of the history - the crucial part, really - is admirably done.

The story of the Festival is also the story of its people, and there are many sharply-etched, nicely balanced portraits here. There is, for example, the essential paradox of the founder Tom Patterson, whose photograph takes pride of place as frontispiece. He was, it seems, a disastrous administrator, so impractical that one of his planning documents for the first season assumed a one-week rehearsal period (I, 43). Yet if he had been a realist the Festival probably would not exist at all. Equally fascinating is the first chairman of the board of governors, Harrison Showalter - Baptist, teetotaller, church organist, manager of a soft-drink business, and possessed of a remarkable combination of faith and sheer stubbornness without which the financial crises of the first year would certainly have been fatal. Less picturesque but equally admirable is the contractor Oliver Gaffney, who kept working on the theatre though he was not being paid and faced financial ruin. He was ready to go under himself rather than let the Festival go under (I, 56-7). Perhaps the saddest irony in the book is that during the 1980 débâcle he was denounced, with other board members, as a mere businessman presuming to dictate to the artists (II, 223). Naturally the artistic directors get the lion's share of attention. Pettigrew gives a full account of Michael Langham's problems and achievements, concluding that his best years, in the early 1960s, were Stratford's golden years. Champions of Robin Phillips may disagree, and of course Pettigrew did not live to see all of this later period of achievement. But it is true that Langham's feat of building a cohesive company with a distinctive style has not been matched by any of his successors. More surprising, and most welcome, is the challenge to the accepted myth that Jean Gascon allowed the Festival to stagnate. In reality, 'Gascon in many ways was - if not always wisely - the most adventurous and experimental of all Stratford's artistic directors' (II, 42). The reservation is important, for many of Gascon's gambles misfired, but the general assessment is supported by the record of Gascon's programming, and the quality of his best work - The Duchess of Malfi and Pericles, for example -was very high. In a similar vein, Portman disposes of the most damaging myth about Robin Phillips, that he sabotaged the work of guest directors. For one thing, Phillips' use of co-directors was an attempt to solve one of the Festival's recurring problems, the company's own tendency to reject any director other than the resident one. Portman also shows that, besides his much-publicised brilliance and tricky temperament Phillips was remarkably frugal (his productions always looked expensive, but he counted every penny) and, despite the nationalist furor at his appointment, he did more than any other artistic director to encourage Canadian playwrights at Stratford.

That leads to the grimmest part of the book, the relations between Stratford and Canada's cultural community. It should be said first that the town of Stratford itself shows up very well here. It was originally a 'dry' town where in the first season Nicholas Monsarrat could not even get ice cubes (I, 1). The local paper initially 'fought the Festival by fair means and foul' (I, 2). A backward hick town, one might think, that didn't deserve a festival. Yet in the early years local fund-raising always exceeded expectation, and if under Phillips the locals began to feel that the Festival was slipping away from them they had over the years earned the right to see it as theirs. The book is dedicated with some ambiguity to 'the people of Stratford'; this is presumably meant to include the citizens of the town, and if it isn't it should be. It is the larger picture that depresses. There is a cumulative impression, which comes into focus at several points, that British and American reviewers have appreciated Stratford more than have their Canadian counterparts. The audience is also, at times, worrying. They have flocked to a succession of bad productions of Macbeth, and stayed away from a brilliant production of Titus Andronicus. In 1964 the box-office for Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme languished until the title was changed to The Bourgeois Gentleman. In 1969 a survey showed that 'only four percent of Canadians had ever attended a live performance of music, ballet and [sic] drama'(II, 11). Finally, the so-called 'nationalists' who have fought the Festival in recent years make the trolls of Peer Gynt look like cosmopolitan sophisticates by comparison. William Hutt fairly characterized the initial reception of Robin Phillips as 'cement-minded' (II, 46). ACTA's refusal to allow broadcasts - and therefore, invaluable records - of Richard III and King Lear because of the presence of little green aliens like Brian Bedford and Maggie Smith, showed a pettiness beyond belief. In the furor over the firing of the so-called 'Gang of Four' the nationalist hysteria over the fact that their replacement was to be an Englishman (John Dexter, generally regarded as one of the world's great classical directors) was allowed to obscure the real issue, the violation of trust, honesty and ordinary decency in the way the original directorate was fired. (The point was made very tellingly in a statement by actor Rod Beattie, quoted at length here - II, 217-18). Much of the nationalist feeling has been centred in Toronto, and when Phillips was developing new Canadian work he generally looked West because of 'the continuing hostility and lack of co-operation of many members of the Toronto drama community' (II, 142). If this book describes a hick town, it is not Stratford.

There are, finally, two mysteries which this book - in which so much is clarified and so many shrewd judgements are made - has to leave in darkness. One is the very existence of the Festival, against what may have looked to any sensible view like insurmountable odds. Pettigrew surveys a number of reasons but finally observes 'a concentration of coincidence and events that seemed to go beyond what could normally be expected' and reports a general feeling 'that something was working in a mysterious way its wonders to perform; that the Festival's success was indeed a miracle' (I, 12-13). By the same token Portman calls the disaster that followed Robin Phillips' resignation 'bizarre and inexplicable' (II, 209). The board's treatment of the succession, and its treatment of the Gang of Four in particular, appears to go beyond ordinary incompetence and bad faith; though Portman does not say so, some demon of destruction seems to have been at work, piling bad luck and (mostly) bad decisions on top of each other in an effort to break the Festival. There seems no reason to doubt that the people responsible meant well and had the interests of the Festival at heart; but they seem at crucial points to have taken leave of their senses. Portman can only report the disaster, and he does this, so far as I can tell, with fairness and sympathy; the explanation, if there is one, must lie outside the province of theatre history, even so accomplished a theatre history as this one.