Toronto to the Stratford Festival by chauffeur: the matinee, the evening, the drive home

The theatre day

The Stratford Festival is North America's largest classical repertory theatre, four stages in a town of thirty thousand a hundred and fifty kilometres west of Toronto, running from April to October. The problem it sets a Toronto audience is the drive: two hours each way, and the evening performance ends at 10:45 with the 401 ahead. A chauffeured Stratford day is an hourly booking of eight to ten hours for a matinee - the drive, lunch, the play, a walk by the Avon, dinner, home by 8 - or ten to twelve for an evening performance with the car waiting through the second act and the drive home in the dark while you talk about it. The evening page is the Toronto theatre night; this page is the Festival.

The drive

The 401 west past Milton, Cambridge and Kitchener to exit 278, then Highway 8 through Shakespeare to Stratford; or the 401 to the 7/8 at Kitchener. A hundred and fifty kilometres, two hours off-peak, two and a half on a Friday afternoon past the 427 and the Milton construction. No tolls unless you take the 407 across the top of the city from the east, which from Markham or Scarborough is worth it. The chauffeur watches Ontario 511; the 401 between Milton and Cambridge is the stretch that slows.

The theatres

The Festival Theatre on the hill above the Avon, the thrust stage the Festival was built around; the Avon Theatre on Downie Street downtown; the Tom Patterson Theatre on the river, rebuilt in 2020 and the most beautiful of the four; the Studio Theatre behind the Avon. The chauffeur drops at each theatre's door and waits in the lot or on Lakeside Drive, and is at the door when the applause ends - the Festival Theatre's lot empties in ten minutes with a car already positioned and forty without. The Festival's season is announced in the autumn and the good matinee seats go by January; book the tickets, then the car.

The matinee day (book 9)

9:30 Yorkville pickup, the S-Class or the sedan, a couple. 11:30 Stratford, a coffee on Ontario Street. 12:00 lunch at the Prune, Mercer Kitchen or Bijou. 1:30 the Festival Theatre's door. 2:00-4:45 the play; the car waits. 5:00 a walk along the Avon to the swans and the Shakespearean Gardens. 6:00 an early dinner, or the drive home with dinner in Toronto. 8:00 Yorkville. Nine hours; nine billed.

The evening day (book 11)

1:00 pickup. 3:00 Stratford, the afternoon in the shops on Ontario Street, the Stratford Perth Museum, the Chocolate Trail. 5:30 dinner at Rundles' successor or the Church Restaurant. 7:30 the Avon Theatre's door. 8:00-10:45 the play. 11:00 the drive home, the chauffeur silent, the conversation about the third act. 1:00 Yorkville. Twelve hours; twelve billed; no late-night rate, because there is no late-night rate.

The two-play day and the weekend

Serious Festival-goers see a matinee and an evening performance in one day - the Festival schedules them for it - and that is a fourteen-hour block or, more sensibly, a night at one of Stratford's inns and a multi-day booking with the chauffeur staying, or two one-way flat fares. The Bruce, the Mercer Hall Inn, the Foster's Inn and the Festival's own accommodation list are the places; the city-to-city page explains when the flat fares beat the overnight. A three-play weekend with four people in the SUV is the Festival at its best.

On the way, and around Stratford

Shakespeare on Highway 8, ten minutes east, for the antiques. St. Marys, twenty minutes south-west, for the stone town, the quarry swimming hole in summer and the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame. Kitchener-Waterloo and St. Jacobs on the way home for the farmers' market on a Thursday or Saturday; the Kitchener-Waterloo page has the detail. London forty minutes further west for a day that combines the Festival with Western; the London page. The chauffeur adds any of them to the block.

Groups and the Sprinter

A theatre club's twelve, a company's client night, a school's drama department's outing, a family reunion at the Festival: the Sprinter from Toronto with the tickets in hand and one organiser's phone, ten to twelve hours, cheapest per seat and everyone home together after the curtain. The Sprinter page has the organiser's checklist and the Festival's group-sales desk handles the tickets.

The car

The Mercedes S-Class for a couple who want the drive to be part of the day, the quiet cabin for the conversation home. The Executive Sedan for the same day at the lower rate. The Luxury SUV for four to six. The Executive Sprinter for a group. The fleet page has capacities. Dress for the theatre travels on a hanger in the boot; the chauffeur has a garment hook.

What it costs

The class hourly rate for the date times the hours, plus HST and the gratuity you set; no tolls unless the 407 is chosen; the theatres' lots are free or the chauffeur waits on the street. The rates page explains the hourly number. Against the train to Stratford - which exists, twice a day, with a taxi at each end and a wait for the last one after the evening show - the chauffeured day is the difference between an evening at the theatre and a logistics exercise.

Stratford, in a table

Booking the Stratford day

Choose By the hour, the class, your address, the date, the start time worked back from the curtain, and the hours; put the theatre, the curtain time and the restaurant in the notes. Book once the tickets are confirmed; summer Saturdays and the opening weeks in May and June are the busiest for cars as well as seats.

The Festival's four stages, in a table

Where to eat in Stratford

Stratford has more good restaurants per head than any town in Ontario, because the Festival's audience has been dining there for seventy years: the Prune, Mercer Kitchen, Bijou, the Church Restaurant, Pazzo, Rene's Bistro, the Bruce Hotel's dining room, and the Boar's Head for a pint. Lunch at 12 for a 2 pm curtain; dinner at 5:30 for an 8 pm one, which every restaurant in town understands. The chauffeur drops at the door; Ontario Street's parking is not your problem.

The Stratford Chefs School and the Chocolate Trail

For the afternoon before an evening performance: the Chocolate Trail's tasting pass from the tourism office on Downie Street, the shops on Ontario Street, the Shakespearean Gardens, the swans, and in autumn the Stratford Chefs School's dinners. The chauffeur waits on Lakeside Drive; the tourism office has the passes.

Justin Bieber, for the visitor who asks

Stratford is also Justin Bieber's home town, and the tourism office publishes a map of the sites; a visiting teenager's afternoon is thereby solved while the parents are at the matinee, and the chauffeur has driven the route.

The Festival calendar, for booking the car

Previews from April, openings in late May and June, the full repertory from July to the Thanksgiving weekend, and a shorter run into October. The summer Saturdays and the opening weeks are the busiest for cars as well as seats; a Wednesday matinee is the quietest day at the Festival and the cheapest on the peak-date layer. The Festival's calendar publishes the curtain times the desk works the pickup back from.

The drive home, honestly

Two hours on the 401 at 11 pm after an evening performance is the reason the Festival's own audience surveys list the drive as the thing they like least about coming from Toronto. In the back of an S-Class with the chauffeur silent it becomes the best hour of the day, and that is the whole case for this page.

For the visitor

A visitor to Toronto who loves theatre has, in Stratford and the Shaw at Niagara-on-the-Lake, two of the best repertory companies in the English-speaking world within two hours of the hotel, and a chauffeured day to each is the way to see them without a rental car. The desk books the car from the hotel with the curtain time and the restaurant in the notes; the wine-tour page covers the Shaw day with wineries around it. Languages on request; the chauffeur's opinion of the season's productions is available but not offered unprompted, and is usually right about the comedies and wrong about the musicals - which is, the chauffeurs say, the Festival's own view of itself.

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