Stratford's 2 musicals offer a study in contrast (AP)

By MICHAEL KUCHWARA, AP Drama Critic 1 hour, 21 minutes ago STRATFORD, Ontario - There's a nice theatrical contrast — all-American wholesomeness vs. determined Teutonic debauchery — on display at the 2008 Stratford Shakespeare Festival. It's the impossibly innocent, strawberry-phosphate, brass-band world of Meredith Willson's "The Music Man" up against the sexually aggressive, pills-and-liquor environment of Kander and Ebb's "Cabaret." Give a slight edge to licentious behavior at the Avon Theatre where both shows are running in repertory well into the fall. Director Amanda Dehnert is brimming with ideas for her production of "Cabaret." Maybe too many. But better overstuffed than undernourished, and Dehnert makes the tale of a young American writer adrift in Berlin during the early 1930s emotionally involving as well as... [read full story]