Stratford Announces 2025 Season
The Stratford Festival has announced a somewhat slimmed down season for 2025 that reflects ongoing financial struggles as the post-pandemic “recovery” proves more sluggish than hoped (or anticipated).
For starters, there will be eleven productions next year as opposed to the more usual twelve. Only one show has been announced for the Studio Theatre; how long it will run remains to be seen.
The good news is that the three Shakespeare plays, one in each theatre, will be helmed by directors with a proven track record of success with the Bard. The bad news is that the Festival cannot seem to shake its habit of producing the same war horses again and again. I will be seeing my third Macbeth, my third As You Like It, and my second Winter’s Tale.
Is the idea that these “tried and true” titles will put bums in seats? If so, it ain’t working. You’d think this season’s Romeo and Juliet would be a sure-fire hit, right? You’d be wrong. Sales have been anemic. I just checked availability for a performance a few days from when I am writing this and it appears the show will play to 25% to 30% capacity.
Would Troilus and Cressida (last done in 2003), or the three parts of Henry VI (last done in 2002), or Richard II (last done properly in 1999) fare any worse? But I digress.
The most intriguing of the announced Shakespeares is Macbeth to be directed by Robert LePage at the Avon, where he gave us an indelible Coriolanus in 2018. His decision to set the play during the biker gang wars in Quebec from 1994 to 2002 sounds bizarre, but could it be any worse than Des McAnuff’s Congo-themed version from 2009?
As You Like It will be the only Shakespeare play presented at the Festival Theatre. It will be directed by Chris Abraham, whose production of Taming of The Shrew, Midsummer Night’s Dream, and The Matchmaker on that stage were all winners. I’m betting he’ll easily surpass the As You Like Its I saw in 2010 and 2016.
Artistic Director Antoni Cimolino, my favorite interpreter of the Bard, will be directing The Winter’s Tale at the Tom Pat. He will be hard pressed to top the visual pizzazz of the late Marti Maraden’s 2010 production at the old Tom Pat.
Two shows are aimed squarely at the young girl market. Annie, the smash hit musical will be directed and choreographed by the protean Donna Feore at the Festival Theatre. Her nationwide talent hunt for Annie and other orphans should stir up a lot of publicity and anticipation.
The other teen-oriented entry is Anne of Green Gables, part of the Children’s Plays series at the Avon. One would think everyone in Canada has already seen Anne of Green Gables on stage by now, but most of those shows were musicals. This one, by Kat Sandler, is a straight play billed as a “bold adaptation” whatever that means. More agency for Anne?
The other musical will be Dirty Rotten Scoundrels by Yazbek and Lane, a more adult-oriented show in the raunchy spirit of The Producers. Bobby Garcia directs and Stephanie Graham choreographs. The key to success here lies squarely in the casting. Any guesses?
Rounding out the presentations on the Festival stage will be Kate Hamill’s lighthearted and, let’s face it, lightweight adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility directed by Daryl Cloran, and a revival of Christopher Hampton’s Dangerous Liaisons directed by Esther Jun.
Four of the shows slated for 2025 are commissions. In addition to Anne of Green Gables they are Forgiveness, based on a memoir by Mark Sakamoto, adapted by Hiro Kanazawa, and directed by Stafford Arima; Ransacking Troy by Erin Shields whose Paradise Lost was a hit of the 2018 season, to be directed by the superb Jackie Maxwell; and Yvette Nolan‘s play The Art of War, about painters sent to the front lines to record the battles of World War II, to be directed by Keith Barker.
Tickets go on sale to members beginning on November 10 and to the general public on December 16, 2024.
