Good, Clean Family Fun

Andrew and I will be taking a trip back east in a week’s time to visit family – first to Halifax to see Andrew’s kin and then to London for mine. Our research for things to do while in London turned up nada. Seems all cultural activities and events are on hiatus for the five days we’ll be there. I’d resigned myself to lounging around my mother’s house not doing much of anything when Andrew sent me this link:

http://www.stratfordfestival.ca/

Stratford is only about an hour’s drive from London and the festival is a great opportunity for a cultural road trip.

Of course the production that immediately jumped out at me was Titus. I remember being both enthralled and horrified by Julie Taymor’s 1999 adaptation starring Anthony Hopkins.

Andrew wanted to get tickets before they sold out. I called mom to see if she would be interested in joining us for a night of shocking and extremely violent culture.

True to form, she is up for anything. Andrew, being curious about reviews, checked out the Titus Twitter feed. One tweet mentioned an audience member’s upgrade to the “splatter zone”.

Being conscientious children we stopped to ponder whether the second-row seats we were considering purchasing might be located in the “splatter zone”. For a moment we wondered if that would be disturbing to my mother, and if Will’s Titus Andronicus was a bit too intense and maybe we should really be taking her to see a nice comedy like The Merry Wives of Windsor instead.

Then we thought, “Nah”, and Andrew went ahead and bought tickets.

With luck my tough nut of a mom will enjoy herself and not be plagued by nightmares after the performance.