Stratford adds Rocky Horror to 2018 schedule,
From Martha Henry as Prospero to Robert Lepage’s directing debut to The Rocky Horror Show, the Stratford Festival’s 2018 season, announced Tuesday, sees the company taking risks and pushing boundaries — even if it may be functioning with one theatre fewer than usual.
In keeping with the current international movement to cast women in Shakespeare’s great male roles, festival stalwart Henry will play the lead role in The Tempest, helmed by artistic director Antoni Cimolino.
There is a feeling of full circle to this casting: Henry, who in recent years has worked for Stratford primarily as a director and educator, first appeared at the Festival as Prospero’s daughter Miranda in a 1962 production of The Tempest.
As previously announced in the Star, famed Quebec director Lepage will direct Shakespeare’s Coriolanus in a production that will include realtime video and elements of social media.
Julius Caesar, directed by Scott Wentworth (who helmed this year’s solid Romeo and Juliet) and The Comedy of Errors directed by Keira Loughran round out the festival’s four 2018 Shakespeare offerings.
Donna Feore, who has become the festival’s go-to musical theatre powerhouse and whose Guys and Dolls is drawing raves, is for the first time directing both of the musical offer- ings — sure to be a logistical and creative feat given they will rehearse during the same time period in order to run for the entirety of the season.
Feore’s production of Meredith Willson’s wholesome family favourite The Music Man will run in the Festival Theatre while the cult classic Rocky Horror Show will play in the Avon Theatre.
“Those of us who came of age with Rocky Horror are thrilled to have it as part of the season,” Cimolino says.
Two modern American classics also feature in the season: Eugene O’Neill’s A Long Day’s Journey Into Night, directed by Miles Potter, and a dramatization of Harper Lee’s novel To Kill a Mockingbird helmed by actor Nigel Shawn Williams in his Stratford directing debut.
Besides The Tempest, first-generation Italian-Canadian Cimolino will direct Napoli Milionaria by Eduardo De Filippo, a comedy set in Naples at the end of the Second World War, in a translation by John Murrell. Lezlie Wade, who directed this season’s HMS Pinafore, will return to helm Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband.
Two new female-led writing projects round out the season: Brontë: The World Without by up-and-comer Jordi Mand (about the literary sisters) will be directed by Vanessa Porteous, and Erin Shields’ new version of Milton’s Paradise Lost will be helmed by Jackie Maxwell, who directed The Changeling for Stratford this season and served for 14 years as the Shaw Festival’s artistic director.
All12 productions are scheduled for the Festival, Avon and Studio Theatres, as the Tom Patterson Theatre is planned for reconstruction. Should municipal approval and federal funding not come through, some productions will shift into the Patterson.