Welcome to the 2013 Season at the Shaw! The 2013 Season will feature ten diverse productions that include: Shaw re-envisioned by both directors and writers, newly commissioned works, plays by a new generation of provocative playwrights, re-explored classics and returning Festival favourites appearing on the Festival’s four Niagara-on-the-Lake stages:
Our Betters
an original stage play by W. Somerset Maugham
Director: Morris Panych
Opens: April 3, Closes: October 27
Theatre: Royal George Theatre
If this play were a personal ad, it would read: rich American women in search of nobility seeking poor British men with titles – a forerunner of Downton Abbey? When American Bessie Saunders comes to London, she is thrust into the world of women of wealth and men of status. The games, the lies, the affairs – what she hears and witnesses, particularly in the garden house of her older sister Pearl, is a mercilessly funny look at Europe’s smart set. Sexy, stylish, provocative and very funny – writer and critic Graham Greene called it “the best social comedy of this century.”
Guys and Dolls
a musical fable of Broadway Based on a story and characters by Damon Runyon Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser Book by Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows
Director: Tadeusz Bradecki
Opens: April 12, Closes: October 12
Theatre: Festival Theatre
In New York City, you’ll meet wise guys and chorus gals, gamblers and actresses, cops and bobby-soxers. Pious Sarah Brown, a sergeant at the Save-A-Soul mission, wants to save their souls while Nathan Detroit needs $1000 to save the city’s oldest floating craps game. Enter high-roller Sky Masterson who takes Nathan’s crazy bet – to woo the virtuous Sarah! Who will take a real gamble on love? Will luck be a lady tonight? Guys and Dolls has been called the “greatest of all American musicals.
Major Barbara
by Bernard Shaw
Director: Jackie Maxwell
Opens: May 2, Closes: October 19
Theatre: Royal George Theatre
Have your ideals tested and your beliefs turned on their head in one of Shaw’s wittiest and most provocative plays. When arms dealer Andrew Undershaft is reunited with his Salvation Army daughter Barbara, each is sure the other’s profession is a source of immorality. She invites him to visit her shelter – he agrees as long as she will come visit his cannon works. They are both convinced that the other will be converted. But who is right, who is wrong, who is good, who is evil is never – typical of Shaw – as simple as it seems.
Lady Windermere’s Fan
by Oscar Wilde
Director: Peter Hinton
Opens: May 9, Closes: October 19
Theatre: Festival Theatre
Oscar Wilde is at his bitingly satirical best targeting Victorian morals (especially marital) in this comic thriller that made him an overnight star. We meet rich, stunning, recently wed Lady Windermere on the day of her birthday ball when a notorious gossip drops by to announce that her new husband is betraying her — with a mysterious woman who is coming to the ball. Be ready for jealousy, intrigue, twists, turns, and massive doses of Wildean wit.
Peace in Our Time: A Comedy
by John Murrell
adapted from BERNARD SHAW’S Geneva
Director: Blair Williams
Opens: May 19, Closes: October 12
Theatre: Court House Theatre
Take Geneva, one of Shaw’s fascinating but thornier late plays, lend it a freewheeling, extravagant adaptation by one of Canada’s most well-respected playwrights, and presto! The result is a sharp, contemporary, political comedy where affairs of state meet the Three Stooges. The play opens in a dysfunctional diplomatic office prior to the Second World War and ends in The Hague at a trial of the world’s dictators. Between, you are taken on a totally manic ride.
Trifles (lunch-time one-acts)
by Susan Glaspell and Eugene O’Neill
Director: TBA
Opens: May 29, Closes: October 12
Theatre: Court House Theatre
Two gripping marital mysteries by two playwrights who helped bring modern drama to America. In Trifles, a man is found dead but his wife can’t explain the rope around his neck. An obvious whodunnit? Not according to the wives of the investigators. In A Wife for a Life (O’Neill’s first play), a husband seeks revenge for his wife’s infidelity. He meets a young man in love and is forced to reconsider the very marriage he seeks to defend. Two little-seen plays in one gem of an outing.
Faith Healer
by Brian Friel
Director: Craig Hall
Opens: June 13, Closes: October 6
Theatre: Royal George Theatre
Three versions of the same story – but which one is true? This mesmerizing tale centres on a small-time faith healer who travels the countryside, miraculously curing the sick (or does he?) in every small town along the way. We also meet his wife (or is it his mistress?) who tells us her own tale of faith and healing; and his manager Teddy, who has his own version of events. Brian Friel is one of Ireland’s master playwrights, and Faith Healer one of his many worldwide successes.
Enchanted April
by Matthew Barber
from the novel by Elizabeth von Arnim
Director: Jackie Maxwell
Opens: June 25, Closes: October 26
Theatre: Court House Theatre
WWI is over but a gloom still hangs over London. Lotty and Rose are two housewives who need some enchantment in their lives. Impulsively, Lotty answers an ad in the paper that reads, “Small castle on the Mediterranean, Northern Italy. To be let for April. Cook, gardens, ocean view.” And so their adventure begins. Recruiting two other women in need of escape, they dive into the experience of a lifetime, rediscovering themselves among the wine, wisteria and sunshine in a play that is timeless, funny and joyfully restorative.
A Light in the Piazza
Book by Craig Lucas,
music and lyrics by Adam Guettel
Produced by arrangement with Turner Entertainment Co.
owner of the original motion picture Light in the Piazza
based on the novel by Elizabeth Spencer
Director: Jay Turvey
Opens: July 4, Closes: October 13
Theatre: Court House Theatre
A glorious musical story set in Italy in the summer of 1953. Margaret is touring the Tuscan countryside with her daughter, Clara. While sightseeing, Clara has a chance encounter with Fabrizio, a handsome Florentine, and they fall in love. Margaret tries to keep them apart to protect her daughter, who isn’t what she seems. But the romance of Italy is powerful, and it slowly transforms them all. From the writer of the musical Floyd Collins, which the Shaw Festival produced to huge acclaim in 2004.
Arcadia
by Tom Stoppard
Director: Eda Holmes
Opens: July 14, Closes: September 7
Theatre: Studio Theatre
You know that the name Stoppard means you’re in for an intellectually dazzling ride. In this case you’re also in for a tale of secrecy and intrigue that’s been hailed by critics as a masterpiece. Set in both 1809 and the present day, it’s a mystery wrapped up in a love story, wrapped up in a scandal. In its unraveling, Stoppard playfully zigs and zags through many realms, including mathematics, poetry, sex and gardening. A roller-coaster ride that is also one of Stoppard’s most moving plays.
