As usual, the Stratford Festival has plenty of kings, queens and princes on its stages this season but, at last, the Ontario theatre town has a place to house them IRL (in real life).
The Bruce – named not after the peninsula, but owner Jen Birmingham’s beloved late father – features 21 spacious rooms and four “petite suites.” Certainly the most comfortable and private spot in a town best known for B&Bs and mid-end accommodation, you may feel like the Prince of Denmark there, and, bounded in your hotel room, count yourself a king of infinite space.
LOCATION, LOCATION
Built on a former industrial site that had sat vacant for a decade, the Bruce is perfectly located for those who have tickets to a show at the Festival Theatre – this year showing Hamlet, The Taming of the Shrew and a critic-converting production of The Sound of Music. There’s a walking path from the hotel across a grassy knoll that leads right to the entrance of the green and pleasant Queen’s Park where the Stratford Festival’s main stage is to be found. For relaxation, the location is equally ideal: Keep strolling just a minute more to get to the Avon River and its walking path where swans, geese and ducks constantly congregate. If you want to visit Stratford’s shopping and restaurant district, see a show at the Avon Theatre or hit a busy bar post-show, however, you’re a good 20-minute walk (longer in high heels) – or five-minute drive – away from the centre.
DESIGN
The Bruce is a somewhat puzzling mix of sophistication and small-town. Chandeliers hang over the beds in the 600-square- foot (or larger) rooms stocked with Frette linens, fresh fruit and flowers, but old issues of National Geographic, Reader’s Digest Condensed Books and a copy of Leonard Maltin’s Movie and Video Guide 2004 may be found on the bookshelves outside your door. A lobby piano complete with piles of musical – the theatre songbooks are either your dream or your nightmare – I, for one, was excited by the possibility of a Sondheim sing-along.
What feels most luxurious is the space – the Bruce is (very) wheelchair accessible and many rooms have walk-out patios that are at a decent distance from one another. But most remarkable are the bathrooms: Mine had a deep soaking tub, a shower stall with the option of gentle, overhead rainfall or a massaging power spray, two vanities at respectful distance from one another, and a toilet tucked away in its own ante-chamber for privacy within privacy.
WHOM YOU’LL MEET
Festival stars such as Deborah Hay and Ben Carlson (wife-and-husband actors currently starring in The Taming of the Shrew) have been known to check into the Bruce for a holiday at home, while Feist passed through on a recent visit. But the hotel is not exactly hip and seems primarily aimed at the older, well-heeled patrons of the Stratford Festival. If you want to run into that young rapscallion Justin Bieber, your best bet is to try Features – a townie diner where I brunched rather obliviously next to the Biebs of a Sunday morning.
BEST AMENITY
From the information card that appears during turndown service telling you the next day’s weather to the fortune cookies stuffed with quotations from Shakespeare, there are plenty of nice touches. For my partner, the lap pool in the excellent gym where she could swim while I wrote my reviews was heaven. But I was most grateful for the guest pantries – complete with Nespresso machines and a complimentary, bottomless cookie jar – that helped keep my critical tank fuelled while I wrote my pan of Carousel.
EAT IN OR EAT OUT?
The excellent eating scene in Stratford, Ont., is in flux at the moment, with restaurants changing owners and trading chefs. The Bruce Hotel’s fine-dining is no exception: Executive chef Arron Carley, a former sous-chef at Canoe in Toronto, just took over the kitchen in May. His approach is one described in the menu as Nouveau Ontario – so, French cooking techniques based around the best bounty from Perth County. I was perplexed by the gin-soaked trout, but found the sous-vided lamb with local legumes and horseradish buttermilk sumptuous. And hooray for an excellent wine cellar you can pick a bottle, then bring the last few glasses back to your room.
IF I COULD CHANGE ONE THING
Well, personally, I was a little irked to discover a copy of Stratford Gold: Fifty Years, Fifty Stars, Fifty Conversations by my frenemy and Toronto Star theatre critic Richard Ouzounian on the dresser. Why not have each room stocked with a collected works of Shakespeare instead?
The Bruce Hotel, 89 Parkview Dr., thebruce.ca. 25 rooms from $350.
The writer paid a reduced rate at the hotel.