The three above-mentioned senior-citizen companies now entering into their 7th decade don’t have a lot in common. The Stratford Festival is a multiple-theatre festival devoted to Shakespeare,  other classics and whatever else will fill the house.  Théâtre du Nouveau Monde is a large theatre with almost 800 seats that does Quebec plays as well as reinvented versions of the classics. And the Hudson Music Club is an amateur company specializing in musicals that rents a school auditorium to put on its shows, the most recent one being 42nd Street.

Coincidentally, the Stratford Festival is also presenting 42nd Street as part of its 60th anniversary season this summer. As for Théâtre du Nouveau Monde, it’s currently treading into Stratford Festival territory with L’Histoire du Roi Lear, an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s King Lear by Normand Chaurette, directed by Denis Marleau and starring Gilles Renaud in the title role. (Read Gazette review here.)

At any rate, they all deserve contgratulations for tenacity and endurance. Bravo!