Shaw Festival Announces 2012 Season

Posted September 21, 2011

The Shaw Festival’s 2012 season features 11 productions presented on the Festival’s four Niagara-on-the-Lake stages, and includes a compelling contemporary musical, two productions by the Festival’s namesake, a newly-discovered Githa Sowerby play, and much more.

Two Shaw Festival premieres and a Coward on the Festival Theatre stage

The Shaw Festival presents Ragtime, the celebrated Tony Award-winning adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s ground-breaking novel. Directed by Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell, the Terrence McNally/Lynn Ahrens/Stephen Flaherty musical epic traces the roots of 20th century America through the complex stories of three very different families.

Also making its Shaw Festival premiere is His Girl Friday by John Guare, a brilliant blending of the 1940 movie of the same name with its original source, The Front Page by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur. Sharing the Festival Theatre stage is the classic Noël Coward comedy Present Laughter.

Works by Shaw, Bernstein, Sowerby, Ibsen, Rattigan and Inge presented in the intimacy of the Court House and Royal George Theatres

At the Court House Theatre, music returns to the lunchtime with Trouble in Tahiti, Leonard Bernstein’s one-act opera on love and longing in American 1950’s suburbia.

The Court House Theatre playbill will continue The Shaw’s exploration of the works of British playwright Githa Sowerby, including A Man and Some Women, a provocative story of a family driven apart by money. Also in the Court House Theatre will be The Millionairess, Bernard Shaw’s madcap comedy centred on one of Shaw’s most glorious larger-than-life heroines, Epifania Ognisanti di Parerga Fitzfassenden.

The Shaw will also feature Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler, and the season’s second Shaw offering, Misalliance, will be presented at the Royal George Theatre. Also at the Royal George Theatre will be Terence Rattigan’s French Without Tears, a sexy comedic romp set in the south of France and one of Rattigan’s longest running hits on the London stage. William Inge's domestic drama, Come Back Little Sheba, will also be staged at the Royal George Theatre.

Helen’s Necklace (Le Collier d'Hélène), by Quebec writer Carole Fréchette, translated and adapted by John Murrell, will be the next offering of contemporary Shavian work in the Studio.

The Shaw’s celebrated Reading Series also returns next season. Dates and details are to be confirmed.

For more information, visit www.shawfest.com.