THEATRE NEWS:
2012 Shaw season includes Ragtime revival
20 SEPT/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency

TORONTO - The Shaw Festival isn’t so much shifting gears as shifting focus, considering the 2012 season announced Tuesday by Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell.

It is a season that embraces Shaw traditions, even while it breaks with them. Two works from the pen of Bernard Shaw, for whom the Festival is named, will be showcased, but neither will play on the Festival Stage — the fest’s largest theatre. Instead, the Festival Stage will play host to a revival of Ragtime, the Tony Award-winning, made-in-Toronto musical adaptation of E.L. Doctorow’s novel of the same name, written by Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens and Stephen Flaherty and directed for the Shaw by Maxwell herself.

Rounding out the season on the Festival Stage will be two productions: John Guare’s His Girl Friday (adapted from Ben Hecht’s and Charles MacArthur’s The Front Page, and from the Columbia Pictures movie), directed by Jim Mezon; and Noel Coward’s Present Laughter, directed by David Schurmann.

Shaw’s Misalliance has been programmed for the Royal George Stage, under the direction of Eda Holmes. It will run in rep with Terence Rattigan’s French Without Tears, directed by Kate Lynch, and William Inge’s Come Back Little Sheba, under the direction of Maxwell who has directed productions of Inge’s Picnic and Bus Stop in previous seasons.

Shaw’s The Millionairess is slated for a Court House production, under the direction of Blair Williams, with productions of Githa Sowerby’s A Man and Some Women (directed by Alisa Palmer) and Henrik Ibsen’s Hedda Gabler (directed by stage legend Martha Henry) rounding out the Court House programming.

The annual Lunchtime offering will also play on the Court House stage, with Jay Turvey directing Leonard Bernstein’s one-act opera Trouble In Tahiti.

Finally, in the intimate Studio space, Maxwell has programmed a new production of Carole Frechette’s Helen’s Necklace, translated and adapted by John Murrell. A director for this production will be announced at a later date, as will complete casting for the season.

Tickets for the 2012 Shaw season go on sale to the general public on Jan. 9.