J. Kelly Nestruck picks eight shows to watch at Stratford and Shaw

The 2024 seasons at the Stratford Festival and Shaw Festival – Southern Ontario festivals in name only, as they open for audiences most of the year – are now under way. These large not-for-profit theatre companies with ensembles that perform in repertory in a dozen or more productions each season make the province a destination for theatregoers. Neither have escaped the perilous times for the performing arts.

Both have run record deficits in recent years: Stratford in 2020, when everything shut down (since eliminated); the Shaw in 2023, when a slower attendance rebound than expected and inflation snuck up on them.

Neither are in immediate danger, but neither shouldn’t be taken for granted either. If you’ve been slow to get back, or have never visited them, this is the year to do it. (Hint: There are plenty of ticket deals – and even pay-what-youwant performances – available if you look.)

Here are eight shows that seem worth the drive this season – or maybe even a flight to Toronto plus a bus ride. Reviews will follow as they open.

THE STRATFORD FESTIVAL Twelfth Night, Festival Theatre Now in previews. Opens May 27. Close Oct. 26

Seana McKenna, a revered company member, is dipping her toes into directing at Stratford with this most reliable of the comedies in Shakespeare’s canon – and it’s evident she knows good acting from the cast she’s assembled. Now firmly established Stratford star Jessica B. Hill is playing the lead role of the cross-dressing Viola, while Laura Condlln and Deborah Hay, two of the company’s all-time greats, are playing the puritan Malvolio and the clown Feste, respectively.

La Cage aux Folles, Avon Theatre Starts previews May 6. Opens May 31. Closes Oct. 26

It is likely that Something Rotten!, a 2015 musical spoof of Shakespeare’s times directed by Donna Feore, will be the fun that many theatregoers are seeking out these days. But La Cage aux Folles, a 1983 musical with a moving score by Jerry Herman and still-funny script by Harvey Fierstein, is the musical on the bill most likely to elicit laughter and tears both. Sean Arbuckle and Steve Ross star as a couple who, respectively, run and perform at a drag club in SaintTropez – and who try to “play it straight” when their son brings home his fiancée and her conservative parents. Thom Allison, who did a fine job with Rent last season, directs.

Salesman in China, Avon Theatre Starts previews Aug. 3. Opens Aug. 23. Closes Oct. 26

During the tenure of artistic director Antoni Cimolino, the Stratford Festival has become one of the best places to see new plays in Canada – and the audience for them keeps growing owing to the quality of scripts with strong hooks and high production values. The enticing crop this year includes this drama by Leanna Brodie and Jovanni Sy that takes as its subject a trip taken by American playwright Arthur Miller (Tom McCamus) to China to direct his most famous play, Death of a Salesman, in 1983. This timely metatheatrical story about building bridges between West and East may also build new audience for Stratford as it is being presented in English and Mandarin with surtitles.

London Assurance, Festival Theatre Starts previews Aug. 7. Opens Aug. 22. Closes Oct. 25

Stratford’s Shakespeare is, usually, a cut above, but the festival’s the only place in North America you’ll find a major revival of a classic like London Assurance – a 1841 comedy by Irish dramatists Dion Boucicault and John Brougham. Geraint Wyn Davies stars as the aging fop Sir Harcourt Courtly, who heads from the city to the country to marry a rich young bride. Among those who get in the way of his plans is the infamously named character Lady Gay Spanker, played here by Deborah Hay who it’s always worth a roll with. Cimolino, who knows his way around a fop-related plot, directs.

THE SHAW FESTIVAL Witness for the Prosecution, Royal George Theatre Open now. Closes Oct. 13

The appeal of the mysteries that are a reliable draw for Shaw audiences is a bit of a mystery to me, personally, but I am always up for a compelling courtroom drama. This 1953 twist-filled play by the great author and playwright Agatha Christie has proved almost as popular as The Mousetrap on stage – with a London site-specific revival running since 2017. The Shaw’s new production here is directed by Alistair Newton, a director with flair.

One Man, Two Guvnors, Festival Theatre

Starts previews June 6. Opens June 21. Closes Oct. 13

I’m surprised, frankly, it’s taken this long for one of Ontario’s repertory theatres to mount English playwright Richard Bean’s adaptation of Carlos Goldoni’s commedia dell’arte classic Servant of Two Masters that was a hit on the West End in 2011 – and catapulted talk-show host James Corden to fame. Peter Fernandes, who deserves to be at least as famous but has the bad luck to be Canadian, stars as the doubly employed lead character – and this show reunites him with the consistently celebrated director Chris Abraham.

Candida, Royal George Theatre Starts previews July 13. Opens July 31. Closes Oct. 11

When this Bernard Shaw play was announced, I crossed my fingers that meant that Sochi Fried – who nearly stole the show with her voracious peformance as Orinthia in The Apple Cart last season – would be cast in its title role. And so she has. Sanjay Talwar plays Candida’s preacher husband and the vital young actor Johnathan Sousa the poet Eugene Marchbanks, the final corner of the unusual love triangle at the centre of this 1894 comedy. Severn Thompson directs.

Snow in Midsummer, Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre Starts previews Aug. 8. Opens Aug. 15. Closes Oct. 5

Finally some classical theatre from China at a Canadian classical theatre! This play by Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig – an adaptation of a 13th-century drama by Guan Hanqing, written during the Yuan dynasty – originally came out of the Royal Shakespeare Company’s crucial Chinese Translations Project. It’s about a young woman executed for murder who returns to haunt her town. National Arts Centre’s English Theatre artistic director Nina Lee Aquino helms the produciton – and the cast is headed by Courtney Ch’ng Lancaster (who is also a director and is staging The Orphan of Chao, another adaptation of a classic Chinese drama, over at the Royal George Theatre).