Why Not Theatre’s Mahabharata at the Shaw Festival in 2023.David Cooper/Supplied
This was a recovery year for theatres across Canada, with scaled-back productions and shorter seasons because of the rising cost of, well, everything. Lumber has become prohibitively expensive, making it more costly to build high-quality sets, and rising inflation has made it tough for audiences to justify spending their earnings on theatre tickets.
That said, 2025 has tons of promising programming across the country, including a bevy of crowd-pleasers that will hopefully entice folks to take a risk and spend some dough to watch a show.
Here’s what I’m looking forward to in the new year.
A new musical that might stand the test of time …
Britta Johnson’s Life After, an exquisite musical about grief and family, makes its off-Mirvish debut in April, after successful commercial runs in Chicago and San Diego. Since being presented in 2016 at the Toronto Fringe Festival and in 2017 by Musical Stage Company and Canadian Stage, Life After has built a cult following among musical-theatre fans, and it’s thrilling to see the show back in Toronto.
… and old musicals with a new spin
Regional theatres across Canada have clearly listened to audiences hungry for high-quality, Broadway-style musicals. Sara Bareilles’s pop-tinged Waitress will see three new productions in 2025: at Winnipeg’s Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre, Vancouver’s Arts Club Theatre and another playing at both London, Ont.’s Grand Theatre and Hamilton‘s Theatre Aquarius.
A new production of Legally Blonde, produced by Theatre Calgary and the Citadel Theatre, will play Calgary next May. I’m pumped, too, for Donna Feore’s production of Annie at the Stratford Festival.
Robust casts at two Ontario festivals
Hotshot director Chris Abraham (also artistic director of Crow’s Theatre) will helm As You Like It at the Stratford Festival next year and the cast alone has me buzzing. Sara Farb, Christopher Allen and Jessica B. Hill are set to star as Rosalind, Orlando and Phoebe, respectively, and I’m excited to see Makambe K. Simamba make her Stratford debut as Celia. A leading cast is rounded out by Seana McKenna, Sean Arbuckle and Steve Ross – heavy-hitters of Canadian theatre and regular fixtures of the festival – and that’s unsurprising, given Abraham could be vying for outgoing artistic director Antoni Cimolino’s job.
As for Niagara-on-the-Lake, I was taken by Gabriella Sundar Singh’s performance as Mary in The Secret Garden at the 2024 Shaw Festival, so I’m delighted to see that she’ll be playing the title role in George Bernard Shaw’s Major Barbara next summer.
Remounts that deserve a revisit
After wowing audiences at the Shaw Festival and Britain’s Barbican Theatre in 2023, Why Not Theatre’s Mahabharata will make its Toronto debut in April at the Bluma Appel Theatre as part of Canadian Stage’s main season. It’s yet another two-part, six-hour programming choice for Canadian Stage – complete with a communal Indian meal at intermission– and I can’t wait to see how it plays in the city, before hopefully heading off to more international tour stops.
In Vancouver, Jessica B. Hill’s The Dark Lady is set to play Bard on the Beach’s summer season. While the play has had productions across Canada, it’s great to see it making a stop on the West Coast – and it’s well worth a visit if you’re local.
And if you missed Salesman in China at 2024’s Stratford Festival, fear not: Leanna Brodie and Jovanni Sy’s luminous new play, about a fraught production of Death of a Salesman, is on stage at Ottawa’s National Arts Centre in January. Another Stratford export, Nick Green’s hauntingly gorgeous Casey and Diana, plays in a handful of cities next year, including Winnipeg, Vancouver, Hamilton and Sudbury – bring tissues if you go.
