Shaw Announces Its 2025 Season
In size and scope the Saw Festival’s 2025 season will look a lot like the current one, with some intriguing differences.
The morning one-act in the Royal George seems to have been axed. But the other shows slated for that venue seemed ideally suited to the former vaudeville house.
As has become standard practice there is only one Shaw play scheduled. In 2025 it will be Major Barbara, which offers a juicy role for one of Shaw’s growing cadre of A-List actresses.
Tons of Money, a 1922 English farce by Will Evans and Arthur Valentine, continues a tradition initiated by former Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell of unearthing forgotten gems from the original “mandate period” of Shaw’s lifetime. I have high hopes for this one.
The third show in the Royal George is something of a departure but it fits with Artistic Director Tim Carroll’s penchant for experimentation. Murder-On-The-Lake, billed as “a spontaneous theatre creation,” is by Rebecca Northan and Bruce Horak. Northan is wrapping up a successful summer season of improv shows at an eatery in Stratford. She is something of a genius in the field of comic improvisation so this one is definitely on my must-see list.
This looks like the last season at the Royal George for awhile. Structural problems necessitate a radical rehab job and Shaw is taking the opportunity to render the venue completely accessible among other improvements. How, exactly, they will address the structural issues is unknown at the moment except for the fact that work will begin when the 2025 season is over.
It’s hard to imagine that the necessary work can be done between seasons so it will be interesting to see how the Festival handles the 2026 season.
At the Festival theatre, Shaw’s premier venue, the headliner is, as usual, a musical. Cole Porter’s Anything Goes will feature a new book by Timothy Crouse and John Weidman.
Also on the docket is The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe, adapted from the C.S. Lewis novel by Selma Dimitrijevic and Tim Carroll.
Presumably Shaw has booked the Frederick Knott thriller Wait Until Dark, adapted by Jeffrey Hatcher into the Festival Theatre in the expectation that it will be a big seller. But surely this play would benefit from the more intimate surroundings of the Royal George.
As was the case this season, there will be just two shows in the small Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre.
Gnit (sic) by Will Enos, who seems to have become something of a favorite of Tim Carroll, is a modern riff on Ibsen’s Peer Gynt.
The 1995 Blues for an Alabama Sky by Pearl Cleage tells the story of Angel, a struggling blues singer in Harlem during the Depression. Shaw has an excellent track record for its productions of plays from the African-American canon.
Finally, the Spiegeltent, nestled between the Festival Theatre and the Studio and usually a venue for cabaret-style entertainments, will host an actual play. Dear Liar by Jerome Kitty is a two-hander based on the correspondence between G.B.Shaw and the actress Mrs. Patrick Campbell with whom he was infatuated.
No information on who will direct any of these shows has been released. Major casting, as always, is announced much later.
Shaw Festival members will be able to order tickets on a to-be-announced date in November. For information of membership CLICK HERE. []
