Stephen Sondheim’s ‘Gypsy’ and Sanskrit epic ‘Mahabharata’ set for 2023 Shaw Festival season

A Stephen Sondheim musical, a contemporary adaptation of a traditional Sanskrit epic and a Noël Coward comedy headline the Shaw Festival’s 2023 season.

The Shaw 2023 program also includes what artistic director Tim Carroll described as “hidden gems”: lesser-known works by James Baldwin, Edith Wharton and Tom Stoppard.

If you’re looking for a play by the festival’s namesake, you’ll need to look further down the bill. Neither of the two George Bernard Shaw works programmed for next season will play at the company’s 856-seat Festival Theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

The season, announced Wednesday, begins Feb. 28 with a four-week run of Why Not Theatre’s production of “Mahabharata,” a large-scale contemporary adaptation of the Sanskrit epic. Written and adapted by Why Not Theatre co-artistic directors Ravi Jain (who also directs) and Miriam Fernandes, “Mahabharata” features a cast made up exclusively of actors from the South Asian diaspora based in Canada, the U.K. and Australia.

The Shaw Festival commissioned and is presenting the production in association with London’s Barbican Centre. “This will be one of the theatre events of the decade,” said Carroll, “and it will all start at the Shaw.”

“Audiences can expect to be surprised” by this epic production, said Jain, which will last six to seven hours including a communal meal break with an elder. This emulates how many people around the world experience the “Mahabharata,” said Jain, “with an auntie or an uncle sharing the story over a meal.”

“Mahabharata” is eight years in the making and is being billed as the largest international tour in Why Not Theatre’s 15-year history. It was originally scheduled for the 2020 Shaw season but was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another holdover from that cancelled season is “Gypsy,” the 1959 musical by Sondheim and composer Jule Styne that ushered in standards including “Everything’s Coming Up Roses” and “Rose’s Turn,” and served as a star vehicle for actor Ethel Merman.

Kate Hennig will star in the festival’s 2023 production as Momma Rose, the indomitable show business mother of stripper Gypsy Rose Lee, according to sources close to the production. Hennig is no stranger to “Gypsy.” She previously was an alternate for Rose and played the role at certain performances each week when the musical was last staged at the festival in 2005.

Next season’s production is scheduled to run from May 10 to Oct. 8 at the Festival Theatre and will be directed by Jay Turvey. He’s taking the helm from Kimberley Rampersad, who was slated to direct when the musical was first announced for the 2020 season.

Instead, Rampersad will direct Baldwin’s “The Amen Corner,” a three-act drama about a teenage jazz prodigy forced to choose between his mother, a church pastor and choir leader, and his dying father, with whom he shares a love of music.

Shaw’s production of the play will feature “a repertoire of rousing songs performed by a gospel choir,” according to Shaw’s season announcement. “The Amen Corner” is scheduled to run July 30 to Oct. 7 at the Festival Theatre.

Rounding out the list of productions in Shaw’s largest performance space is Coward’s “Blithe Spirit,” directed by Tarragon Theatre artistic director Mike Payette. The comedy, which is scheduled to run June 14 to Oct. 8, follows novelist Charles Condomine, who enlists the help of medium Madame Arcati to perform a séance at his home.

A few blocks from the Festival Theatre, the 305-seat Royal George Theatre will host four productions. First up is “Prince Caspian,” a stage adaptation by Damien Atkins of the C.S. Lewis novel of the same name, the second book in “The Chronicles of Narnia” fantasy series. Scheduled to run from March 30 to Oct. 8 and directed by Molly Atkinson, the play is also from the cancelled 2020 season.

Theatregoers disappointed by the last-minute cancellation by Mirvish Productions of Stoppard’s Broadway-bound “Leopoldstadt” will have a chance to catch one of the British playwright’s other works. His two-hour farce “On the Razzle,” which follows two shopkeepers on the lam in a small Austrian village, is scheduled to play the Royal George from April 16 to Oct. 8, directed by Craig Hall.

Next season’s lunchtime one-act play is Shaw’s “Village Wooing,” which the playwright described as a “comedietta for two voices”: characters known simply as “A” and “Z.” Directed by Selma Dimitrijevic, it is scheduled to play at the Royal George June 8 to Oct. 7.

The fourth production at the festival’s mid-size theatre is “The Shadow of a Doubt” by American author Wharton, perhaps best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Age of Innocence.”

Though written in 1901, “The Shadow of a Doubt” — Wharton’s first work and only play — was never produced and abandoned for unknown reasons. A complete manuscript of the play, which focuses on the issue of assisted suicide, was found in 2017. It finally premiered as a radio play in 2018. The Shaw production, scheduled to run July 16 to Oct. 15, is directed by Peter Hinton-Davis.

The festival’s 267-seat Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre will feature three productions: “The Playboy of the Western World,” an Irish comedy by J.M. Synge, directed by Maxwell herself (another holdover from the 2020 season); Shaw’s satirical comedy “The Apple Cart,” directed by Eda Holmes; and Helen Edmundson’s “The Clearing,” directed by Jessica Carmichael.

The 2023 season will also feature a new venue in the form of a Spiegeltent: a pop-up big top that will house Carroll’s production of Pierre de Marivaux’s 18th-century romantic comedy “The Game of Love and Chance.” A different cast drawn from the festival’s ensemble will perform the show at each performance and will be dissuaded from learning lines in advance. “We are excited to share all the craziness and brilliance of this remarkable company” through this production, said Carroll.

Local history and culture are celebrated in the puppet play “A Short History of Niagara,” returning for its third season in 2023. Alexandra Montagnese’s and Mike Petersen’s 30-minute show, presented in partnership with Parks Canada, will be performed at Fort George and in the Court House Theatre’s Market Room.

The full casts and creative teams for the productions will be announced at a later date. Tickets for the 2023 season will be on sale Nov. 5 for Friends of the Shaw and Dec. 3 for the general public.

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