Canada’s Stratford Festival has announced its 2017 season, which will celebrate the nation’s 150th birthday. Included in the slate, is the musical Guys and Dolls; Gilbert and Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore; and three world premiere works by female Canadian playwrights—two of which are specifically commissioned by the festival.
Donna Feore will direct Guys and Dolls, the musical tale of Broadway by Frank Loesser, Abe Burrows and Jo Swerling in the Festival Theatre; and Lezlie Wade will helm HMS Pinafore, with choreography by Kerry Gage.
In the Studio Theatre, the festival will present three new works by Canadian playwrights at different stages of their careers: Sharon Pollock, Colleen Murphy and Kate Hennig. Murphy’s The Breathing Hole, directed by Reneltta Arluk and Hennig’s The Virgin Trail, directed by Alan Dilworth, have both been commissioned by the festival; while director Keira Loughran will re-imagine Pollock’s 1976 play The Komagata Maru Incident.
The three Shakespeare works on offer will be Twelfth Night, directed by Martha Henry; Romeo and Juliet, directed by Scott Wentworth; and Timon of Athens, directed by Stephen Ouimette.
Other classics featured in the festival line-up include Anna Carson’s version of Euripides’ Bakkhai, directed by Jillian Keiley from a female perspective; Moliere’s Tartuffe, directed by Chris Abraham; Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, directed by Mitchell Cushman; Thomas Middleton’s The Changeling, directed by Jackie Maxwell; Richard Brinsley Sheridan’s The School for Scandal, directed by Antoni Cimolino; and The Madwoman of Chaillot by Jean Giraudoux, directed by Feore.
For more information visit Stratfordfestival.ca.
