Some Stories about Peter Pan!
L-R: Tom McCamus, Michael Therriault and Sean Cullen
Yesterday I took the kids to see Peter Pan at the Stratford Festival. What an incredible show! We were fortunate enough to catch the action from the second row, just right of center, thanks to my penchant for staying up late. I scored the $85 a pop treasures for $10.81 the night of April Fools Day. So we dressed in our theatre finest and two very excited little girls took me to the show!
We arrived early so I could find parking and eat Ken's fries with malt vinegar from a paper bag before we went in. I'm cultured like that. Then we had to wait a bit in the lobby. The little girls were the subject of much oohing and ahhing from the teenagers that were there on various school trips. They were adorable in their matching dresses and princess pony tails. We had a little "what to expect and how to behave in the theatre" conversation and they were very cooperative and understanding.
As we waited a nice looking older gentleman began a conversation with them. He asked them if they were excited to see Peter Pan. Martina replied that indeed she was and that it was her favourite movie and that she "knew all the characters." at which point the gentleman turned to me and asked how old she was. When I said 4.5 he said he was very impressed by her conversational abilities.
So then he told us a story. It was the tale of Nana. He told them that when his son was around five years old Peter Pan was his favourite story. Around that time the family also adopted a boxer, an older dog who was terribly difficult. They had called the dog nana of course. Nana was not completely house broken. She ate everything in sight including at one point an SOS pad which had her pooping blue all over the house and cost a fortune in vet bills.
One day the gentleman went to school to pick up his son and the young boy's teacher asked Mr. Schramek how Nana was. He replied, somewhat puzzled that the dog was fine. The teacher gasped! Dog? The son had been regalling them with tales of Nana's adventures, how Nana had pooped on the living room floor, how Nana had pooped blue poop and had to have xrays after she ate the SOS pad and the entire time the teacher had been very concerned, particularly when young Jay said that his mean dad said Nana would have to go to a new home if she kept it up! This very funny anecdote had us all in stitches.
It also had the casting people in stitches when Jay T. Schramek auditioned for the role of Nana in the Stratford Festival's production of Peter Pan and this is the reason the gentleman was telling us now. He was there to watch his son perform. Well Mr. Schramek, your son did you proud. How very dog-like he was and he managed to avoid cleaning products entirely though I am sure there was a bit of the old Nana incorporated into his interpretation of the character! Well done and deserving of the standing ovation at the end.
I also have a tiny Peter Pan connection myself. The lead actor, Michael Therriault was once a massage client of mine. Perhaps I should have entitled this post, I massaged Peter Pan, might have gotten more traffic to the blog but I'm not sure I want to attract that element of the internet. For the record, it was a relaxation chair massage and he quite enjoyed it. We had a nice chat and it was perfectly innocent. I had no idea how old he was, honest officer.
Completely off topic but I've haven't seen so many grown men with shaven armpits and legs since a very lively period in my early twenties that I might write about another time. Michael Therriault was wonderful and very relaxed. Child-like and limber, I think my massage had lingering affects!
If you are fortunate enough to ever go to Stratford this season I highly recommend the show for adults and kiddies a like. A tight, well performed production with talent in buckets. The props and setting were wonderful and being in the second row, right under the man-catcher of Captain Hook's ship was incredibly thrilling for mommy as well as girls! Oh and both my little girls wish to be actors now. I told them I'd be very proud to see them play a dog on broadway someday and they agreed that would be a wonderful role to have.
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Aaron Kropf
Social and Online Media Coordinator
Stratford Shakespeare Festival
Breeze
Carolyn