Illustration by Tiffany Chin
As city stages reopen again this fall, Canada’s performing-arts scene continues on its roller-coaster recovery, adjusting to inflation and other pandemic aftershocks. Having tried to lure audiences back and attract new ones with big ambitious swings first, and then with more conservative crowd-pleasers, theatres are now offering a mix of shows across the land. Here are 10 live productions – new creations, revivals, musicals and international hits – that seem highly promising.
Middletown
Pacific Theatre in Vancouver, Sept. 18 to Oct. 6
American playwright Will Eno’s off-centre response to that most American of stage classics, Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, has become such a mainstay of theatres on this side of the border that there’s even a separate Canadian edit of the script. Arthi Chandra and Jamie King co-direct the moving, magical show next in a Sticks and Stones production packed with the crème de la crème of Vancouver indie acting talent.
The Seafarer
Alberta Theatre Projects in Calgary, Oct. 15 to Nov. 10
Christmas is coming early to Calgary this year with acclaimed director Peter Pasyk’s new production of this Yule-themed 2006 play set during a poker party by Irish playwright Conor McPherson. The big deal is that screen and stage star Paul Gross (Slings & Arrows, Passchendaele) is returning to his hometown to play the role of the mysterious, Mephistophelian Mr. Lockhart.
Playing Shylock
Canadian Stage in Toronto, Oct. 26 to Nov. 17
Before he was one of Hollywood’s favourite there-are-no-small-roles actors, Saul Rubinek cut his teeth with the alternative Toronto Free Theatre – which eventually evolved into Canadian Stage, the city’s sort-of-regional theatre. Rubinek is returning at that company’s Berkeley Street Theatre this fall starring in a play by Mark Leiren-Young about an actor playing Shylock in a production of The Merchant of Venice that gets cancelled. Martin Kinch, a former TFT leader, directs.
Segal Centre in Montreal, Oct. 27 to Nov. 24
CAA Theatre in Toronto, Dec. 5 to Jan. 12
This megaquirky off-Broadway spoof of James Cameron’s Titanic stacked with Celine Dion hits and featuring Dion and Victor Garber as characters is perhaps the most Canadian show to ever not be created by Canadians. Its actual northern debut, however, comes in October in Montreal ahead of a Toronto run backed by Mirvish Productions. There will be no put-on Québécois accents for our Celine: Véronique Claveau, noted singer and sketch comedian who has impersonated the comeback queen off and on since adolescence, plays the role.
The Lion King
Princess of Wales in Toronto, starting Nov. 2
Two decades after its original Canadian production closed in Toronto, the highest-grossing stage show in Broadway history roars back on stage for a second open-ended run courtesy of Mirvish. A new generation of locals and tourists will be wowed by director Julie Taylor’s spectacular puppet-filled Disney production, with its now classic songs by Elton John, Tim Rice and Lebo M. A cast of Canadians and South Africans includes well-known talents such as Salvatore Antonio, Jewelle Blackman and Camille Eanga-Selenge as well a host of young Simbas and Nalas who just can’t wait to be kings and queens.
Raven Mother
The Cultch in Vancouver, Oct. 9-12
Danse Danse in Montreal, Nov. 12-16
National Arts Centre in Ottawa, Nov. 20-22
Public Energy Performing Arts in Peterborough, Ont., Nov. 26
DanceWorks in Toronto, Nov. 29
Dance Victoria in Victoria, Jan. 24
Dancers of Damelahamid’s newest choreographed work – a mix of movement, song, regalia, sculpture and design – honours the late elder Margaret Harris, who co-founded the company in 1967 and played a key role in the revitalization of Indigenous masked dance along the Northwest Coast after the lifting of the potlatch ban. With extra financial support from the National Creation Fund, it’s the most ambitious show in the company’s history – and centres on a stunning large-scale Gitxsan transformation mask that opens to reveal several interior masks and speaks to the theme of intergenerational cultural endurance.
Bad Hats Theatre’s Peter Pan
Globe Theatre in Regina, Nov. 27 and Dec. 22
The Globe has been moving around Saskatchewan’s capital city for the past four years as its unique in-the-round theatre has undergone a lengthy redevelopment that started fall of 2020. Now, the venerable regional theatre finally reopens that stage at MacCorquodale Place with a new production of Toronto troupe Bad Hats’ hit musical adaptation of Peter Pan directed by Judy Wensel that you will be able to go back and see four times – once from each side.
Bluebirds
Theatre New Brunswick in Fredericton and on tour, Oct. 11-26
Vern Thiessen, one of Canada’s most produced playwrights (whose adaptation of The Diviners continues at the Stratford Festival into the fall), premiered this play about nurses in the First World War with Theatre New Brunswick in 2022. Now, director Natasha MacLellan’s popular production is back for a victory lap around the Maritimes, touring from Fredericton to Dartmouth’s Eastern Front Theatre.
Interior Design
Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, Oct. 15 to Nov. 10
The Bidding War
Crow’s Theatre, Nov. 12 to Dec. 15
It sometimes seems like the housing crisis is the only subject Canadians want to talk about these days. You’ve got to laugh at the situation we’re in – and two Toronto companies are giving audiences that opportunity this fall with new comedies. First comes Rosa Laborde’s Interior Design directed by comedy queen Kat Sandler, in which four women – played by Sara Farb, Anita Majumdar, Rong Fu and Meghan Swaby – consider changes to a condo and themselves; then comes Michael Ross Albert’s The Bidding War, in which characters played by a stacked cast that includes Peter Fernandes and Fiona Reid battle to buy the city’s last affordable house.