Stratford Festival’s 2023 season to feature television star Paul Gross and Broadway actor Andrea Macasaet

Casting for the Stratford Festival’s 2023 season, announced Tuesday, includes a star-studded lineup of stage and screen talent.

Canadian actor Andrea Macasaet, currently starring on Broadway in the musical “Six,” is set to make her Stratford Festival debut as Mimi Marquez in “Rent,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning musical by Jonathan Larson. And returning to Stratford for the first time in more than two decades is “Due South” actor Paul Gross, who will play the titular character in William Shakespeare’s “King Lear.”

The upcoming season, which officially opens May 30 with “King Lear” and runs through Oct. 29, features a slate of 13 productions, and a company of veteran actors and rising stars.

“I’m very proud of the overall group of artists that are coming to the festival, some for the first time,” said Antoni Cimolino, artistic director of the Stratford Festival, in an interview with the Star. “It’s the product of very vigorous work in terms of our casting team and our directors at the festival.”

Joining Gross in “King Lear” are Michael Blake as Edmund, Déjah Dixon-Green as Regan, Anthony Santiago as Gloucester, Tara Sky as Cordelia and Gordon Patrick White as the Fool.

In “Rent,” appearing opposite Macasaet are Robert Markus as Mark Cohen and Kolton Stewart as Mimi’s love interest, Roger Davis. Larson’s rock musical, slated to play at the Festival Theatre, follows a group of young artists living in Manhattan during the AIDS crisis and is loosely based on Giacomo Puccini’s opera “La Bohème.”

The musical’s supporting cast includes many Stratford debutants, marking one of the most significant shakeups of the festival’s musical ensemble in recent years. Cimolino attributed to changes to the fact that “Rent” calls for different talent requirements compared to recent musical productions, many of which included heavy dance elements.

The season’s other musical, “Monty Python’s Spamalot,” stars Jonathan Goad as King Arthur. Goad, the multidisciplinary artist who recently appeared in Canadian Stage’s production of “Public Enemy,” is joined by Eddie Glen as Patsy, Aaron Krohn as Sir Lancelot, Trevor Patt as Sir Robin, Jennifer Rider-Shaw as the Lady of the Lake and Liam Tobin as Sir Galahad. The comedy musical, which picked up the 2005 Tony Award for Best Musical, is a holdover from the festival’s cancelled 2020 season and will play at the Avon Theatre.

Another production from two years ago is Shakespeare’s “Much Ado About Nothing” at the Festival Theatre, which will star Graham Abbey and Maev Beaty, both originally cast in the 2020 production.

“We have tried, wherever possible, to fulfil the promise of that 2020 season because that was such a heartbreaking interruption to our work,” said Cimolino. “People were looking forward to playing parts, and directors and designers had thought through their work. So we wanted to make those dreams come true for our artists and for our audiences.”

“Frankenstein Revived,” a new dramatic movement piece created and directed by Morris Panych, was originally slated for the newly rebuilt Tom Patterson Theatre in 2020 but will now play the Avon Theatre next season. The production, which focuses on the life and work of Mary Shelley, will feature Charlie Gallant as Doctor Frankenstein, Laura Condlln as Mary Shelley and Marcus Nance as the Creature.

The final production at the Festival Theatre, Michel Tremblay’s classic comedy “Les Belles-Soeurs,” will be led by a trio of beloved Stratford actors. Seana McKenna, Lucy Peacock and Diana Leblanc will play Rose Ouimet, Germaine Lauzon and Olivine Dubuc, respectively, in what is the first Stratford production of Tremblay’s Québécois masterpiece in 32 years. The cast also includes Joella Crichton, Déjah Dixon-Green, Allison Edwards-Crewe, Antonette Rudder and Tara Sky.

Other significant names in the upcoming season include Geraint Wyn Davies. The stage and screen actor, who led the Canadian television series “Forever Knight” and has appeared in several Stratford productions, returns to the festival to star as Otto Marvuglia in Eduardo De Filippo’s dark comedy “Grand Magic,” translated by John Murrell and directed by Cimolino.

Meanwhile, Stephen Jackman-Torkoff plays the title role in what is billed as a “revolutionary new adaptation” of Shakespeare’s “Richard II,” adapted by Brad Fraser, and directed and conceived by Jillian Keiley, former artistic director of the National Arts Centre’s English theatre.

Financial figures for the 2022 season, which concluded last weekend, have yet to be released, but Cimolino told the Star that the number of tickets sold this past season is meeting, and possibly surpassing, expectations from the start of the year.

“Normally in a festival season we would do about half a million tickets sold,” he said. “This year, we put together a budget that represented around 60 per cent of that … and we’re tracking at that and beyond that.”

He still cautioned, however, that despite the strong numbers this season, it will likely take several years for the festival to return to where it was before the pandemic.

“I think the arts across the world are realizing this is going to be a multi-year build back,” he said. “So things are going in the right direction, but are we there yet? No, we’re gonna keep have to keep working.”

Tickets for the 2023 season go on sale to members of the Stratford Festival on Sunday and will be available to the general public starting Dec. 12.

SHARE: