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Summer travel can be an enlightening as well as a recreational getaway. A long day's drive from east central Illinois are two world class theater companies that have made pilgrimages to southern Ontario a routine for many in Illinois. The Stratford Festival in Stratford and the Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake make a strong case for summer travel with a performing arts slant.

Stratford, Ontario is roughly a 10-12 hour drive and the home, since 1953, of one the world's most famous theater companies. In a season that lasts from April to late October, there is much to choose from, but first a look at its keystone, the works of William Shakespeare.

Open and going strong is a splendid production by Stratford's Artistic Director, Des McAnuff of As You Like It. With a 20th century setting that creates an anti-fascist feeling of refugees struggling between the wars, this interpretation soars. It is beautifully-paced, lyrical, and the Bard's poetry really resonates to the ear. Brent Carver as Jaques shows us how a modern actor presents a timeless creation from four centuries ago. Just opened are productions of The Winter's Tale and The Tempest and you will hear about those productions in August.

Brent Carver is in top form again in Stafford Arima's production of Jacques Brel is Alive and Well and Living in Paris. Beyond Brent Carver's extraordinary reading of those songs you think you know, this rendering will make you think the musical again. New songs have been added, new orchestrations by Rick Fox breathe serious life into these standards, and many these old "stand-up" songs are infused with a life you may never experience again. Grab this one.

Chicago's top musical director, Gary Griffin, has done it again at Stratford with stunning production of Evita. OK, maybe you have seen it too many times? Griffin fearlessly reshuffles Hal Prince's blocking and directorial concepts that have dominated this musical since its origins and he gives his audience a new and exciting experience. Juan Chioran (Peron) and Josh Young (Che) are wonderful in these critical supporting roles, but it is to a diminutive and dynamic Chilina Kennedy that this show belongs. Her Eva Peron really hits the mark.

Sir James Barry loved to write plays as J.M. Barry and who could forget his masterpiece, Peter Pan? Most know it as a musical, but in its original form it is not. Director Tim Carroll gives us the original with a few appropriate modern stage flourishes, and the magic of

Never-Never Land is still there for the whole family.

For times and tickets--www.stratfordfestival.ca, or call: 800-567-1600.

Two hours east in Niagara-on-the-Lake is The Shaw Festival. It has been an unusual season with the two Shaw plays opening later, but plenty is available now that is familiar and rare to theater-goers. In the familiar category, Harvey, Mary Chase's 1945 Pulitzer Prize

winner about the nice guy with a friend who happens to be an invisible six foot rabbit. Joseph Ziegler's direction does little to make this play resonate to a modern audience with many scenes soaked in saccharine stagecraft. Only Mary Haney seems to salvage some

sense of the potential for timeless comedy. Yet, Tom Murphy's new translation of Chekhov's The "Cherry Orchard truly soars under Jason Bryne's direction. Here Chekhov's complex characters really live on stage and you become part of their lives.

Clare Boothe Luce's The Women, a potentially fascinating character study from the late 1930's, never gets beyond a theatrical time capsule in Alisa Palmer's production. With the exception of Sharry Flett in a stunning supporting role, these women rarely

rise above the level of cardboard caricatures. Yet Jackie Maxwell's production of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband makes this 1895 parable of pay for play politics as relevant as today's headlines. The burdens of office and the baggage of the past are beautifully

nuanced with a minimum amount of preaching in what remains as one of the great 19th century stage essays on ethics.

The musical Shaw has selected is a truly rare item, Kurt Weill's, Ogden Nash's and S.J. Pearman's, One Touch of Venus. This mid-1940's satire on "modern art" made Mary Martin a star, but has faded into obscurity since then. If Eda Holmes' revival is typical

of how a modern director sees this, you understand the obscurity it has earned. This in-your-face production looks like something from the performing style of the 1920's and these comedic characters look just plain silly. Here a dated musical really creaks

with modern silliness.

Watch for two Shaw plays, The Doctor's Dilemma and the rarely performed, John Bull's Other Island, directed by University of Illinois graduate Christopher Newton, to round out the mid-summer program, and we will look at those later. For current information--

www.shawfest.com, or call: 800-511-7429