Jonathan Church’s first Stratford Festival season serves up musicals, Shakespeare, and literature adaptations — with a helping of Saul Rubinek
iPhoto caption: Stratford's Tom Patterson Theatre. Photo by Ann Baggley.
The Stratford Festival has announced the lineup of its inaugural season programmed by incoming artistic director Jonathan Church.
Musicals and Shakespeare remain pillars of Stratford’s programming, with 2027 highlights including a new Canadian Jacob Two-Two musical and two of the Bard’s thornier plays: The Merchant of Venice and The Taming of the Shrew. A Festival Theatre production of Hamlet directed by Des McAnuff, a former Stratford artistic director, “will stand at the heart of the Festival’s 75th-season celebrations,” according to this morning’s press release.
Church’s Stratford directorial debut will happen at the Avon Theatre, where he’ll stage a two-part epic — the Canadian premieres of Wolf Hall and Bring Up the Bodies, adaptations of Hilary Mantel’s popular novels about the Tudor court.
Accomplished Canadian actors Eric McCormack and Saul Rubinek are making their returns to Stratford. The former stars in an autumn staging of Noël Coward’s Present Laughter, while the latter appears in a triptych of works conceived around The Merchant of Venice’s character of Shylock, Jewish identity, and Rubinek’s own family history.
With this programming comes scheduling shifts: performances will usually start 30 minutes earlier, making it a little more likely for Torontonians to arrive home before midnight; and a handful of productions are running during more condensed periods, rather than all summer.
But remounts are back. After this year presenting Donna Feore’s productions of Guys and Dolls and Something Rotten! — previously staged in 2017 and 2024, respectively — Stratford is bringing back Feore’s Chicago, from 2022, and Kat Sandler’s Anne of Green Gables, from 2025.
“One of the things that drew me to Stratford is the extraordinary range of work that can flourish here,” Church said. “There are very few theatre companies in the world where Shakespeare, major musicals, family theatre, new Canadian plays, and large-scale historical drama can share the same season. That breadth is one of Stratford’s great strengths and it is something I wanted to embrace in my first season as artistic director.”
Here’s what to expect from Stratford in 2027:
Festival Theatre
Hamlet
Written by Shakespeare
Directed by Des McAnuff
June 20 to October 30, 2027
Mary Poppins
A musical based on the stories of P.L. Travers and the Walt Disney film
Directed by Jonathan O’Boyle and Stephen Mear
Choreographed by Stephen Mear
April 29 to November 6, 2027
Chicago
Music by John Kander, lyrics by Fred Ebb
Book by Fred Ebb and Bob Fosse
Directed and choreographed by Donna Feore
May 24 to November 7, 2027
Avon Theatre
Wolf Hall
Adapted by Mike Poulton from Hilary Mantel’s novel
Directed by Jonathan Church
June 4 to August 21, 2027
Bring Up the Bodies
Adapted by Mike Poulton from Hilary Mantel’s novel
Directed by Jonathan Church
June 19 to August 21, 2027
Anne of Green Gables
Adapted by Kat Sandler from the novel by Lucy Maud Montgomery
Directed by Kat Sandler
September 2 to 25, 2027
Present Laughter
Written by Noël Coward
Directed by Richard Ouzounian
October 9 to November 28, 2027
Tom Patterson Theatre
Jacob Two-Two Meets the Hooded Fang
Adapted by bookwriter David S. Craig, composer-lyricist Anika Johnson, and composer-lyricist Britta Johnson from the novel by Mordecai Richler
Directed by Stafford Arima
Choreographed by Jesse Robb
Produced in partnership with Theatre Calgary
April 28 to October 30, 2027
The Taming of the Shrew
Written by Shakespeare
Directed by Krista Jackson
August 11 to October 31, 2027
The Merchant of Venice
Written by Shakespeare
Directed by Chris Abraham
May 8 to October 30, 2027
Studio Theatre
Playing Shylock
Written by Mark Leiren-Young
Directed by Martin Kinch
Produced in association with Starvox Entertainment
May 21 to September 25, 2027
All in the Telling
Written by Saul Rubinek
Directed by Chris Abraham
August 4 to September 26, 2027
Almighty Voice and His Wife
Written by Daniel David Moses
Directed by Yvette Nolan
June 11 to September 25, 2027
More information about the Stratford Festival’s 2027 season is available here.
The Stratford Festival is an Intermission partner. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
Liam Donovan
Liam is Intermission’s senior editor. He lives in Toronto. His Substack newsletter is available at loamdonovan.substack.com.
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