Plummer's Words Are Intoxicating

Canada has many national treasures, but Oscar-award winner Christopher Plummer must be one of the most gifted ones! Fresh from his Oscar laurels as Best Supporting Actor in the movie Beginners in February, Plummer gave a bewitching performance in a one-man show A Word Or Two at this season's Stratford Shakespeare Festival.

At 85 and still dapper, Plummer gave a performance of his lifetime this past weekend when I was there at the Avon Theatre. I like it even better than his other successful one-man show Barrymore because this one is almost an autobiography delivered by the master himself on stage. Against a very simple but stunning and symbolic staircase of hardcover books, Plummer walked, danced, recited poetry, referenced Shakespeare and other literary greats, sat in the elegant Director's chair, read behind a podium and laughed and cried (teary-eyed) with the audience in English and French.

Spanning a career of over 60 years, Plummer celebrates the beauty of language via this 90-minute performance. In the fast-moving tech world of the internet, smartphones and social media, he's showing us the impact of the written word while he's growing up in Montreal. We, the audience, strolled with him through his most favourite literature - from the Bible to Shaw and Wilde to Coleridge and Marlowe; from Shakespeare and Byron to Nash and Leacock.

As a result, I found myself savouring every word he said and, like enjoying a bottle of vintage red wine, became totally intoxicated at the end of the show. My friend and I both concluded as we exited from the theatre that the performance inspired us to go back home and read more poetry!

Plummer wrote in the introduction to the program guide that he wants to show what impact the written word can have on impressionable youth. Unfortunately, like other Stratford Shakespeare Festival performances, there was hardly any youth in sight among the audience yesterday. It's depressing to see a sea of seniors as the primary audience. Perhaps it's Plummer's age which mainly attracts an older audience, but to preserve and cherish our other national treasure, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival itself, the Festival's marketing department ought to do more to attract more multicultural and younger audiences. According to The Globe and Mail, the audience at Stratford has been declining in the last 10 years. This is certainly not a good sign - we don't want Plummer to pass and move on, but as he said, this will come one day. The Festival itself should be a different story - It's time that they start filling the seats with younger bums!