Stratfest@Home debuts new musical miniseries

The Stratford Festival’s streaming service, Stratfest@Home, has added four new viewing options this season, including two new pieces of original content.

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Debuting last month was The Understudy, a short film that follows the story of an actor who receives the fateful last-minute call that he must go replace the star of a major stage production of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, all while caring for his young granddaughter.

Making is debut this week is a four-part musical series, Never Doubt I Love, which follows six members of a regional theater company. While the spoken parts of this series are all scenes from Shakespeare productions, it features music by several celebrated songwriters, inducing Richard Rodgers, Cole Porter, Rufus Wainwright and Steven Page. It also features five original songs from Leslie Arden, Beau Dixon, Britta Johnson, Adam Sakiyama and James Smith.

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Directed by Richard Ouzounian, this new offering follows in the footsteps of another Stratfest@Home production, Northern Tracks, and was filmed all over the Tom Patterson Theatre.

“We used the theater – pretty much every square inch of it – so it was exciting to work on and to construct,” Ouzounian said.

However, Ouzounian and director of photography Nicholas Shields were determined not to reuse any locations in the theater this time around.

“So we didn’t want to duplicate ourselves. We didn’t repeat any shots or any locations we had used,” Ouzounian said.

During a scene where actor Sayer Roberts fences and sings about an uncertain actor, they used movable panels, usually employed for musical rehearsals, to depict a hall of mirrors. Filming in a theater building, but going beyond the stage, also allowed for more creativity, Ouzounian added.

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Instead of using artificial rain for actor Gabriel Antonacci’s number, The Wind and The Rain, from Twelfth Night, they used an outdoor staircase to depict him going home after a long season of personal and professional drama.

“It’s one of the most impressive shots you’ve ever seen. It would look like we built this extravagant set for $500,000, and it was actually just there in the Tom Patterson Theater, but the way we discovered it and lit it and used it made it look spectacular,” Ouzounian said.

While the spoken dialogue comes from Shakespeare, the text is not used in the original context. The first episode depicts a scene where one of the actors and the stage manager are discussing whether the actor is in love or is just sad.

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“It’s a typical conversation an actor and a stage manager might have, but it’s the opening scene of the Merchant of Venice untouched,” Ouzounian said.

Shot about 14 months ago, the production was a feat in itself, with the biggest challenge being the abbreviated schedule – they had only five days to film – while much of the cast was occupied with other jobs during the Festival’s offseason.

“If you tell people that we shot a four-part series that runs close to 90 minutes in five days, they’ll think you’re crazy. But we did it because the kind of people you get working at Stratford are at the top of their field. You get the best technicians, the best camera people, the best actors, the best musicians – they all know how to do it perfectly,” Ouzounian said.

Never Doubt I Love also stars Sara Farb, JJ Gerber, Evangelia Kambites and Kimberly-Ann Truong. Also new to Stratfest@Home are the Festival’s 2024 production of Cymbeline and the 2023 production of Alice Childress’s Wedding Band.

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