While many of you were relaxing at cottages this summer or doing a bit of travelling, Bob and I also did some travelling – to St. Jacob’s, Cambridge, or Drayton Ontario, to attend theatrical shows. Some of you know that we are big fans of Drayton summer repertory theatre and go to several shows every year. If you like live theatre, there is no better deal in or near the GTA. Tickets for the best seats in the house are in the neighbourhood of $50 -$60, compared to the $180 per ticket we paid to see Something Rotten at Stratford. Over the years we have seen a lot of theatre, in many different venues – Stratford, Shaw, London, Broadway, Sydney Australia, to name a few – and the calibre of the shows produced by Drayton Entertainment could stand up to anything.
Tickets are usually available for the next season early in December. We check out the playbill, decide on the shows we would like to see, check with our kids to see if they are interested in any of them, and order all the tickets at once, spread out over the summer. We prefer to go to a weekday matinee, at one of the six local theatres at which these performances are featured. We take a picnic lunch and try to arrive about an hour before the show, as some of the parking lots are quite small. We get parked, have our lunch, see the show, and then go somewhere for dinner. It’s one of my favourite ways to spend a day. It’s a “date day” for us.
The first show on the agenda this year was 42nd Street, early in July, that I attended with our daughter-in-law Christine. Bob and I had seen it a few years ago at Stratford, and the Drayton production was staged a little differently but was every bit as professional and entertaining.
Later that month Bob and I and our son John went to see Sister Act at the Drayton Festival Theatre in, you guessed it, Drayton. It wasn’t one I would have chosen, but John had seen the movie and thought it would be good. Well, it was more than good, it was fabulous, filled with glorious gospel-inspired music, wonderful dancing, and an uplifting story that sent us home happy.
If you’re an Elvis fan, you would have loved the Drayton production, Return to Grace. I am not a particular fan of Elvis, but the star of the show (“Elvis”) was excellent and I enjoyed it anyway.
Late in August we headed to the Hamilton Family Theatre in Cambridge to see Nashville Music City. What a great show that was! Ten performers on stage belting out with joyful exuberance or poignant reflection, songs made famous by singers who got their start in Nashville in the early years of country rock music. People like Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Johnny Cash, George Jones, Willie Nelson, Kenny Rogers, Dolly Parton…the list goes on. We loved it!
We have one more to see in 2026, in December – All is Calm, the story of the Christmas Truce.
The audience for these shows, as is usually the case, is mostly made up of people old enough the remember things like Elvis’ first performance on the Ed Sullivan show in 1956, where he was only shown above the waist because his hip gyrations were considered too suggestive for family viewing. I was there, in front of our old, snowy, black-and-white TV. I was ten years old.
I am constantly blown away by the talent we have, right here in southern Ontario. I like to read the bios of the cast members and creative teams and am gratified to see that most are Canadian and many are graduates of Toronto’s Sheridan College Music Theatre program. I think it’s amazing – they can sing, they can dance, they can often play multiple musical instruments, they can memorize hundreds of lines of script in a very short time – and deliver it all to their audiences with impeccable timing and consummate professionalism.
I was surprised to learn that professional main-stage shows at Drayton Entertainment typically rehearse for only about 2 to 3 weeks full-time (six days a week, roughly 8 hours a day) before opening, which is standard for regional theatre and professional companies working under Canadian Actors’ Equity Association guidelines.
If any of this interests you, just google Drayton Entertainment for the 2027 Playbill. Next year’s line-up will feature shows like Billy Elliot (we saw it in London a while back and loved it), Come from Away, Jimmy Buffet’s Escape to Margaritaville, Ghost: The Musical, School of Rock, Country Legends: Home for the Holidays, and several non-musical dramas including To Kill a Mockingbird. I know what we will be doing next summer.