“Facing dwindling ticket sales from U.S. theatregoers and its first deficit since the early 1990s, the Stratford Shakespeare Festival is appealing to government for financial support to help it through the recession. The Stratford, Ont., festival revealed in a press release sent out on Saturday that it had suffered a $2.6-million deficit in 2008 despite a program featuring Christopher Plummer in a critically acclaimed production of George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra.”