Festival Theatre

Brief Encounters
Previews - April 11
Opens - May 20
Closes - October 24
by Noël Coward

• Three different stories all inspired by three brief moments in time, come together to make up Brief Encounters.
• Directed by Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell, Brief Encounters features Still Life, We Were Dancing and Hands Across the Sea, three of the best known one-act plays from Noël Coward’s Tonight at 8:30 collection.
• This is the first triple bill in the Shaw Festival’s Coward cycle of ten one-act plays.
• Set and costumes designed by the Shaw Festival’s Head of Design, William Schmuck and lighting design by Head of Lighting Design Kevin Lamotte.
• Jackie Maxwell and William Schmuck’s previous collaborations include last season’s production of The Stepmother and Rutherford and Son in 2004.
• Still Life was adapted by Coward into the 1945 film Brief Encounters (later remade starring Richard Burton and Sophia Loren in 1974).

Born Yesterday
Previews - May 5
Opens - May 23
Closes - November 1
by Garson Kanin

• Garson Kanin’s clever and witty political satire is directed by Gina Wilkinson, with set and costume designs by Sue LePage and lighting design by Alan Brodie.
• Born Yesterday is a charming tale of one woman’s awakening to the value of knowledge.
• Though the play comments on the manipulations and manoeuvrings of backroom politics, it is the message of hope for the future and the celebration of education and empowerment that endures.
• The stage production of Born Yesterday opened in 1946 at the Lyceum Theatre under the direction of Garson Kanin.
• The play opened to rave reviews and holds the record for the longest run at the Lyceum.
• The play was adapted into a successful 1950 film and was remade in 1993 with the same name. The 1993 remake, with updated plot, was directed by Luis Mandoki and starred Melanie Griffith as the central character.
• A 1989 revival of the play starred Madeline Kahn.

The Devil’s Disciple
Previews - June 14
Opens - July 9
Closes - October 11
by Bernard Shaw

• Director Tadeusz Bradecki directs Shaw’s eighth play – the play that affirmed Shaw’s career as a playwright.
• Bradecki always brings a new and surprising point of view to classic American stories as seen in the Shaw’s recent productions of The Crucible and Happy End.
• The Devil’s Disciple is designed by Peter Hartwell with lighting design by Head of Lighting Design Kevin Lamotte.
• Written in 1897, this comedy/adventure/romance tells the tale of Richard Dudgeon, a local outcast and self-proclaimed "Devil’s disciple".
• In a twist characteristic of Shaw’s love of paradox, Dudgeon sacrifices himself in a Christ-like gesture despite his professed infernal allegiance.
• The play is set in New Hampshire in 1777 at the time of the American Revolution.
• Published in Shaw’s 1901 collection Three Plays for Puritans.
• Though appreciated by audiences in the United States, The Devil’s Disciple did not have successful run in England. One theory credits the plot involving the defeat of British military forces for its unpopularity with British audiences.

Court House Theatre

Ways of the Heart
Previews – July 21
Opens – August 1
Closes – October 11
by Noël Coward

• Directed by Blair Williams, with set design by Sue LePage, lighting design by Dora Award winner Louise Guinard and costumes by Judith Bowden, winner of the Virginia and Myrtle Cooper Award in Costume Design; Ways of the Heart is the second trio in the Noël Coward’s Tonight at 8:30 cycle.
• From love to heartbreak to farce via drama, Ways of the Heart features The Astonished Heart, Family Album andWays and Means and demonstrates the full range of Coward’s genius.
• The Astonished Heart is "a tragedy in six scenes" and is told through a series of flashbacks in reverse order.
• The title The Astonished Heart is taken from Deuteronomy 28:28.
• The Astonished Heart has enjoyed several major revivals and was adapted to film in 1949.
• Described by Coward as "a comedy of manners with music (period 1860)", Family Album centres around a family gathering after their father’s funeral. The wine begins to flow and family truths are revealed.
• In the short comic play Ways and Means, a couple running out of luck find their fortune again with style and grace all on the French Riviera.

A Moon for the Misbegotten
Previews – April 28 
Opens – May 23

Closes – October 9
by Eugene O’Neill

• O’Neill’s bittersweet love story is directed renowned Canadian actor and director Joseph Ziegler with set design and costumes by Tony Award nominee Christina Poddubiuk.
• A Moon for the Misbegotten can be thought of as a sequel to O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey into Night.
• Premiered at the Hartman Theatre in Columbus, Ohio in 1947.
• The play has been produced five times on Broadway.
• The original production opened in 1957 and ran for 68 performances.
• First revival opened in 1973 at the Morosco Theatre and ran for 313 performances.
• Two years later, the made-for-TV production of A Moon for the Misbegotten earned five Emmy Award nominations.
• Recent revival of A Moon for the Misbegotten starred Kevin Spacey, Eve Best, Billy Carter, Colm Meaney and Eugene O’Hare at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre following a 112 performance run at the Old Vic Theatre in London.

Albertine in Five Times
Previews – June 24
Opens – July 10 
Closes – October 10
by Michel Tremblay
Translated by Linda Gaboriau

• Michel Tremblay’s humorous Canadian classic on the ups and downs of life is directed by Micheline Chevrier, who directed The Kiltartan Comedies in 2007.
• Designed by Dora Mavor Moore Award winner Teresa Przbylski with lighting by Dora Mavor Moore Award winner Ereca Hassell.
• Michel Tremblay is one of Canada’s most-produced and the most important playwright in the history of the country.
• Though mentioned frequently in Tremblay’s novels and memoirs, the character of Albertine/Robertine is the central figure in Albertine in Five Times and is based on one of Tremblay’s real-life aunts.
• The character of Albertine is played by five actresses at various ages.
• Tremblay is considered one of the best playwrights for women.
• Tremblay has received many national and international top honours.

Royal George Theatre

Sunday in the Park with George
Previews - April 1
Opens - May 22
Closes - November 1
Music and lyrics by Stephen Sondheim
Book by James Lapine

• Directed by renowned director Alisa Palmer and designed by Judith Bowden, one of Canada’s top designers, this Sondheim musical about love, art and inspiration has enjoyed several major revivals.
• Sunday in the Park with George was nominated for ten Tony Awards and won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1985, numerous Drama Desk Awards, the 1991 Olivier Award for Best Musical and an Olivier Award for Outstanding Musical Production in 2007.
• The musical was inspired by the painting "A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte" by Georges Seurat.

In Good King Charles’s Golden Days: A True History that Never Happened
Previews - April 17 
Opens - May 21
Closes - October 9
by Bernard Shaw

• Directed by Eda Holmes, whose credits at The Shaw include Lillian Hellman’s The Little Foxes, the musicalTristan (2007), Love Among the Russians (2006) and Floyd Collins (2004).
• Set designed by Dora Award winner and Siminovitch Prize Protégé Award winner Camilla Koo with costumes by award winning designer Michael Gianfrancesco.
• Shaw’s Restoration comedy, where everyone from George Fox, the founder of the Quakers, to Sir Godfrey Kneller the painter and, King Charles II appear, with interruptions by three of the king’s mistresses, and Queen Catherine of Braganza.
• In Good King Charles’s Golden Days is subtitled A True History that Never Happened.
• Written in 1938-39 as an "educational history film" for film director Gabriel Pascal.
• The first production of In Good King Charles’s Golden Days was at the Malvern Festival Theatre in 1939 and was billed as ’a history lesson in three scenes by Bernard Shaw’.

Play, Orchestra, Play
Previews - June 9 
Opens - July 11 
Closes - October 31
by Noël Coward

• Artistic Director Emeritus Christopher Newton directs the third installment in the Noël Coward Tonight at 8:30cycle featuring Red Peppers, Fumed Oak and Shadow Play.
• Designed by Cameron Porteous, with lighting by Louise Guinard, both renowned designers in their field.
• Play, Orchestra, Play contains some of Noël Coward’s most celebrated songs.
• This particular Coward threesome focuses on some of the more specifically musical plays in the Tonight at 8:30 collection.
• Red Peppers and Shadow Play feature some of Noël Coward’s most celebrated songs including "Then", "You Were There" and the namesake of this programme, "Play, Orchestra, Play".
• Red Peppers is a short musical comedy that allows the audience to witness the fun on both sides of the curtain.
• Coward considered the song "You Were There" a "pleasant, sentimental little song and we [Coward and Gertrude Lawrence] both enjoyed doing it".
• In Shadow Play, a husband’s request for a divorce leads his wife to take an overdose of pills. Through the theatrical device of a shadow play, scenes from their marriage and the past and present all become intertwined in a kind of musical fantasy. Once she awakens, what will reality bring?
• Fumed Oak is a short play in two scenes and looks at the notion of fading illusions from the perspective of Henry Gow, a family man who has had enough.

Star Chamber (Lunchtime) 
Previews - June 25 
Opens - July 5 
Closes - October 11
by Noël Coward

• Hilarious last selection in the Tonight at 8:30 collection is directed by Kate Lynch and designed by the Shaw Festival’s Head of Design, William Schmuck.
• Least known and produced of all the Tonight at 8:30 plays.
• The Shaw Festival’s presentation marks the first time since its 1936 performance that Star Chamber will be produced along with the other nine plays in the Tonight at 8:30 series.
• Draws on Coward’s own experiences as President of the Actors’ Orphanage, a post he held from 1934 to 1956.
• Coward makes fun of egocentric actors and the pedantry of committees.
• Another great ensemble piece in this collection.

GEO TOUR