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REVIEW: In Stratford's Hobbit, the magic is entirely human
In a screen-saturated world, live theatre reminds us what arms and legs can do
about 5 hours ago
1 / 2 From left: Sara-Jeanne Hosie as Old Took, Heidi Damayo, Tim Campbell as Smaug and Richard Lee as Bilbo Baggins, The Hobbit. (Stratford Festival 2026 Photo: David Hou)
This Hobbit world is not CGI, and that is a wonderful thing.
The gasp-worthy moment of the Stratford Festival’s production of The Hobbit comes when three puppeteers work together to conjure a fierce, winged dragon – and you believe every second of it.
Even while Smaug seethes, you can slightly see the legs and bodies of the three puppeteers. Their bodies aren’t covered in black so as to disappear into the backdrop. Instead, their clothing is subtly part of the puppet design, slightly opening the seam between fiction and reality.
In the first act, a scene featuring three large Trolls is another puppet highlight; Derek Kwan, Michael Man and Ijeoma Emesowum inhabit William, Tom and Bert as large, bumbling creatures – scary enough to make children squeal and stupid enough to make them laugh.
Beneath the Trolls’ massive bodies, we can see the actors' arms and legs doing the work of puppeteering. The transparency of these creatures being operated by human bodies is the point. We get to peek at the living, breathing human craftsmanship, even while surrendering to the illusion of the story.
Members of the company, The Hobbit. (Stratford Festival 2026 Photo: David Hou). Submitted Photo
For the uninitiated: The Hobbit follows Bilbo Baggins, a cautious Hobbit recruited by the wizard Gandalf to join a company of Dwarves on a quest to reclaim their mountain home from the dragon Smaug. J.R.R. Tolkien published the book in 1937, and it’s one of the most beloved adventure stories in the English language.
Tolkien wrote it for children, though it has many adult fans. And director Pablo Felices-Luna's production clearly invites that dual audience into the theatre. It succeeds on the strength of Stratford stagecraft and a wink-wink from Sara-Jeanne Hosie, who plays Old Took, Bilbo's grandfather and the production's narrator.
Old Took’s asides to the audience are a gentle finger on the page, keeping track of where we are in the story, making sure nobody gets lost along the way. From the first moment, we adore her and Hobbit outfit, which she charmingly reveals by taking off her outer layer in the first moments of the play.
In her debut at Stratford, costume designer Ting-Huan Christine Urquhart puts the ensemble inside sculptural textile art. The Dwarves, Trolls and other creatures are given padded suits that conceal their human shapes almost entirely, adding volume and weight until the actors seem like unfamiliar beings living in a world that's nothing like ours.
The characters in this world seem gender-fluid, and it works. Why would Middle-earth creatures express gender the same way humans do? The logic of this world doesn't require it.
Richard Lee’s humble Bilbo uses his body to tell the story. And playing a menagerie of roles, Laura Condlln, Heidi Damayo, and Jennifer Villaverde, Emesowum and others in the ensemble bring a clown-like physicality to speechy scenes. Their job is to gesture the dialogue so younger audience members get the gist.
As Thorin Oakenshield, leader of the Dwarves, Aaron Krohn plays one of the few obviously male characters. And yet in Krohn’s hands, he’s got a sweet, vulnerable side too.
Michael Man’s Gollum is unsettling, but as Elrond the Elf lord, he assumes a regal pedestal. He first floats onstage wearing blonde hair extensions, a pleated maxi skirt, and flowing cape. One might expect to see this Elrond on the red carpet at the Met Gala.
It's wonderful to see Man play a character of such stature and power. It’s all the more striking because he's one of the smaller actors in the company. The Hobbit has always argued that size is beside the point, and this production agrees.
Like the costumes, the stage set does storytelling work. Ramps and levels transform the Avon Theatre into a shifting landscape. As the Hobbits travel, they climb, and as they climb, the light drains away into the cold darkness of stone caves.
With compositions by Debashis Sinha, the music in this production is also responsible for world-building. It’s unfamiliar and non-melodic, apparently rooted in a minor-key folk tradition that feels imported from another world. This is a world with its own cultural memory.
Members of the company, The Hobbit. (Stratford Festival 2026 Photo: David Hou). Submitted Photo
Where the production loses its footing is in the plot-heavy speeches, which feel like they belong to a different, more adult show than the one the designers are making. Families in the audience – and there were many – audibly flagged during these stretches.
Behind me in the audience, I sensed one little audience member climbing into daddy’s lap, taking advantage of a somnolent moment in the script. I felt a bit sleepy too.
But when Tim Campbell’s Smaug puppet appears – with help from Damayo and Lee as his expressively flapping wings – the content of those earlier Gandalf speeches turns out not to matter much. It’s enough to know that a bunch of Dwarves and a small Hobbit went on a journey and now a Dragon is big mad.
I stopped trying to follow the details of the plot to sit back and enjoy the puppetcraft, including a tiny bird that saves the day. That bird is the Thrush, puppeted by Sara-Jeanne Hosie, the same actor who opened the show as Old Took the narrator. The storyteller and the saviour are the same person. It's a beautiful piece of casting logic.
Rather than simplifying the story or talking down to younger viewers, this production uses stagecraft – costumes, puppets, stage sets, sound, gesture, light, and movement – to maintain and guide their attention.
For example, when Bilbo first holds up a tiny little ring he found - a ring that, despite its size, is extremely important in the plot – a trilling sound draws the eye and ear simultaneously. It signals to even the youngest audience members that this object matters.The ring’s trill is a small example of intelligent direction for a dual audience.
As a novel, The Hobbit has always belonged to two audiences at once – the child encountering Middle-earth for the first time, and the adult who never quite left it. This production understands that. It doesn't choose between them. It holds both hands and walks into a dark cave.
REVIEW: Something is still Rotten in Stratford, and it might be the omelettes
Two Donna Feore productions, one flavourful season
1 / 2 Members of the Company. (Photo: Dariane Sanche)
2 / 2 Mark Uhre as Nick Bottom (centre-left) and Dan Chameroy as Nostradamus with members of the company in Something Rotten!. (Stratford Mark Uhre as Nick Bottom (centre-left) and Dan Chameroy as Nostradamus with members of the company in Something Rotten!. (Stratford Festival 2024 Photo: Ann Baggley)Submitted Photo
One might argue that Donna Feore's crowning achievement as director and choreographer lies in a particular through-line running across the 2026 season. In Guys and Dolls, there are sexy dancing chickens. In Something Rotten!, there are a dozen dancing eggs, and — in the final scenes, a whole buffet of dancing omelettes.
Goofy though it may sound, it’s delightful to see the narrative through to its logical conclusion. But to reduce this season to that one delicious detail would be to undersell Feore and the incredible ensemble she leads. The parsley-haired omelettes who dance the finale of Something Rotten! are just an exclamation mark on this story.
Jeff Lillico as Shakespeare (centre) with members of the company, Something Rotten! (Stratford Festival 2026 Photo: Ann Baggley). Submitted Photo
In reality, the story of 2026’s musical season is one of teamwork and collaboration that is flat out inspiring. At times during both shows, the sheer number of people flying about multiple levels of the stage feels like the stomach-dropping swoop of a roller coaster. You can feel the risks and practice and precision in every moment.
Something Rotten! is set in England in the 1590s, where two brothers — Nick and Nigel Bottom — are desperate to compete for patronage with the annoyingly popular Will Shakespeare. Their solution is to invent an entirely new theatrical concept. They're going to call it a – cue jazz hands – “musical!”
With music and lyrics by U.S.-born brothers Wayne Kirkpatrick and Karey Kirkpatrick and a book by John O'Farrell, the musical was first produced on Broadway in 2015. It was a cult favourite that found its ideal home at Stratford in 2024. The show’s references to Shakespeare took on a sharper flavour here, and the egg-based send up of Hamlet made it a repeat ticket for many.
To mount this show only two years later is to promise audiences who saw it last time bigger, better and more. This production delivers. But I also hope the people who come to see it on repeat also see Guys and Dolls. To see both of these musicals in one week is to marvel at the ensemble’s range, excellence and stamina, and to go up and down the swoop of the roller coaster several times.
Leading the swoop is Mark Uhre, my new favourite musical theatre actor. That he can sing, dance and act Nathan Detroit in Guys and Dolls on a Monday night and Nick Bottom in Something Rotten! on a Thursday is in itself a triple-threat feat. It’s in keeping with the ambition of this Stratford season.
Jeff Lillico is convincing as Will Shakespeare, the rockstar bard and villain who drives the comic plot of Something Rotten! The actor is more known by Stratford audiences for his dramatic roles, but he was clearly having a great time up there, and the part fits him like a custom-fitted rocker jacket.
Juan Chioran, take a bow for your sex-curious Puritan daddy, Brother Jeremiah. Dan Chameroy, you can be my Nostradamus.
Henry Firmston plays an emergent man in a romance subplot. Nigel is the younger of the brothers in the writing duo, and a sincere poet who falls in love with Brother Jeremiah’s daughter Portia. We’re rooting for him in the star-crossed romance that builds from a shared love of Shakespeare's sonnets. As Portia, Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane brings a crystal clear voice and a youthful energy that matches her beloved’s perfectly.
Dan Chameroy as Nostradamus (left) and Mark Uhre as Nick Bottom with members of the company in Something Rotten!. (Stratford Festival 2024 Photo: David Hou). Submitted Photo
As Nick Bottom’s wife Bea Bottom, Starr Domingue is a show stealer. Bea plays with the Shakespeare trope of gender-switching characters by telling Nick she’s doing it to find work to make up for his failing income as a thespian. She goes about becoming an utterly competent jack-of-all trades – with a moustache of course. Domingue’s solo ‘Right Hand Man’ is a winner.
The talent in the Bottoms’ troupe of male thespians runs so deep it makes this production into a fully immersive experience. Some of them are in training to play women’s parts. And they’re actually nailing it. For example, Eric Abel knows how to make a bustle skirt swish.
But men in ridiculous women’s fashions are always entertaining. More surprisingly, these men can pull off comedy even as they convey a darker detail of life in Shakespeare’s time. In the first act, a catchy number called ‘The Black Death’ makes reference to the bubonic plague, which was a constant threat to the playwright's work life.
So it’s like The Office, but in the Renaissance. When any one of the employees of this working dance troupe twirls across the stage, he stands out brilliantly for a very brief moment. But soon the attention is on someone else. It goes from Abel to Devon Michael Brown, to Jeremy Carver-James, to Gabriel Antonacci. They got this.
Meanwhile, Sinclair-Brisbane as Portia and Domingue as Bea help move the plot forward in scenes with fewer characters on stage. Bea’s comment that “it’s easier to get work” as a man is a meta moment. But her ingenious breadwinning comes across with a confident chuckle, like: I got this.
The women in this ensemble stand out because there are fewer of them. They embody corseted fans of Will Shakespeare's, running after him every time he graces the stage. They play Puritan girls, showgirls in a dream sequence, townsfolk, and ultimately, omelettes, transforming into someone new in almost every scene.
Clearly someone choreographed all of this with enormous care and ambition. That someone is Donna Feore, and this is her season.
REVIEW: In Stratford's Death of a Salesman, capitalism is an indifferent villain
Thankfully, Stanley the waiter with a trumpet-playing side gig knows what to do about that
about 23 hours ago
1 / 2 From left: David W. Keeley as Uncle Ben and Tom McCamus as Willy Loman, Death of a Salesman. (Stratford Festival 2026 Photo: David Hou)
The beginning of Death of a Salesman is one of its highlights. When trumpet player Michael Louis Johnson enters wearing a suit and holding a trumpet, it's a surprise — the audience is still being seated.
He plays a few incredible songs, also telling stories about the songs above the din, apparently talking directly to certain people in the front rows, the balconies, the ones already seated but still arranging their shawls around their shoulders. When the audience is finally settled, he lovingly but firmly reminds them – in a Brooklyn accent – to turn their ‘ringaling’ devices off.
Lucy Peacock as Linda Loman with members of the company, Death of a Salesman. (Stratford Festival 2026 Photo: David Hou). Submitted Photo
A trumpet player walks into a play…
As the production's composer and music curator, Johnson wrote this production's score himself — and you can feel it. Every note, achey and tender, is unmistakably the work of a living person. No machines were involved in the making of this music. Later reappearing after intermission to play more moody tunes, this trumpet player becomes a sort of moral centre for the play.
In the third act, the trumpet player reappears — this time not holding a trumpet but a tray. It turns out he’s got a side gig. He's a waiter named Stanley at a Manhattan restaurant called Frank's Chop House. By now, we feel we already know him.
After a difficult scene in which Stanley realizes Willy can't afford to leave the tip he puts down, Stanley quietly slips the money back into Willy's pocket. Though Willy has been asking for help from the other men in his life — his friend Charley, who does loan him money, his sons Biff and Happy, his boss Howard — it's Stanley the waiter who performs one of the only acts of genuine human kindness in the entire play.
He wears a hero's apron while the rest of the adult male characters, the men living inside a capitalistic delusion, keep putting on and taking off their suits and vests and coats, as if obsessing over their public image.
Attention must be paid to Linda
Linda is the only one in the Loman family with a clear-eyed view of the world. She's the ever-suffering wife and mother who makes everything okay at home. It's lovely to see Lucy Peacock in this role, portraying a very real and relevant archetype we lean on heavily in capitalistic society: She’s a caregiver.
Throughout the play, even while she speaks her lines, she's doing invisible labour to support her money-earning men. Linda's role is to support their deluded pursuit of easy money, scrimping and saving, paying the many bills with never quite enough.
Peacock’s Linda unfailingly keeps the fridge stocked with milk. She always knows where Willy’s slippers are. Her whole domestic existence seems to be about preparing the space for her husband and sons. And she gets shushed when she tries to participate in conversations about anything else.
The set looks like a low-rent corner of Brooklyn, apartment buildings on all three sides. Lights come on and go off intermittently, reminding us that the Lomans are just one ordinary family among many, trying to make their way through endless economic mazes.
From left: Raymond Strachan as Bernard and Josh Johnston as Happy Loman, Death of a Salesman. (Stratford Festival 2026 Photo: David Hou). Submitted Photo
As the young sons Biff and Happy, Joe Perry and Josh Johnston are perfectly cast. Their energy bursts with potential, but their father's lessons — that salesmanship is manhood — left them with no true sense of what either word means.
How much is Willy’s downfall his own doing?
Tom McCamus plays Willy in a way that is genuinely difficult to watch. His delusions come across as age-related dementia as much as mental illness. His unravelling occurs scene by scene, through gesture as much as dialogue. We feel sorry for this Willy even when he’s being a jerk.
He puts his jacket on. He takes it off and hands it to Linda. She puts it on a chair. He looks around for it, finds it, puts it back on. It’s painful and precise.
Arthur Miller's play, first staged in 1949, has only become more poignant. He was warning us about the cruelty of capitalism long before things got this bad. What this production understands is that Willy's tragedy isn't private. It's systemic. He didn't invent the values that destroyed him. He inherited them, believed in them, and upheld them in his home.
Willy and Linda Loman aren't relics. They're everywhere. The idea that a person's worth is their paycheque, that confidence is a substitute for competence, that financial victory is available to anyone willing to hustle hard enough — these myths are still alive 75 years later. If anything they've expanded. Women are now expected to hustle just as hard while still doing the care work Linda does. Or hire low-paid immigrants to do it.
Director Dean Gabourie keeps the pacing taut, and the Avon Theatre's stage serves the material well. The set never lets you forget the weight of the mortgage, the smallness of the rooms where these big feelings are being pushed down.
Death of a Salesman asks us to grieve a man we may not entirely like, and this production earns that grief. Peacock's Linda will stay with you. She’s a woman of dignity in a situation that has denied her dignity.
Linda sees clearly, but she’s not the protagonist. Her voice is in service of Willy's story. In 2026, that choice lands differently than it once did, and this production doesn't quite reckon with it. The play's last words belong to Linda: "We're free and clear," she says, kneeling at Willy's grave, telling him the final payment on their mortgage has been paid. “We’re free,” she repeats, several times. It's the most heartbreaking line capitalism ever wrote.
But perhaps the play is trusting us to do that reckoning ourselves. We can ask: If Linda had an epilogue, what would she say? If Stanley were to play another tune, what would it be?
REVIEW: In Stratford's Midsummer, director Graham Abbey conjures the family we all dream of
This intimate production at Tom Patterson Theatre is funny, moving, and unexpectedly contemporary
Mike Nadajewski, Michael Spencer-Davis, Sara Topham and André Sills. (Photo: Dariane Sanche)
Perforce! Last night I came upon an idyll.
There was I, walking along the Avon River, verily enchanted by the sight of swans. Whereupon a group of fashionably dressed people gestured at me to enter a beautiful building that seemed to have arisen from the riverbank itself.
Inside, a dream came over me. Under a full moon, I was introduced to a fairy changeling named Rose Petal, two pairs of young lovers in a confusing tangle of romantic feelings, and a powerful fairy king bent on humiliating his own queen.
Perhaps you've heard of this idyll? The one called A Midsummer Night's Dream, directed by Stratford native Graham Abbey and performed at the Tom Patterson Theatre? T'is a marvel!
Or perhaps you haven't. The plot goes like this: A controlling Athenian father named Egeus tries to force his daughter Hermia into marriage with Demetrius, and she runs away into an enchanted forest with her lover Lysander. Meanwhile, Hermia’s friend Helena loves Demetrius — but he can't stand her.
In this forest, a mischievous spirit named Puck meddles with everyone's hearts, a fairy queen falls in love with a man who has been given the head of a donkey, and love itself is revealed to be confusing, chaotic, and not entirely to be trusted.
A happy comedy with comforting undertones
Sara Topham as Titania (centre) with members of the company, A Midsummer Night's Dream. (Stratford Festival 2026 Photo: David Hou). Submitted Photo
Shakespeare wrote this famous dream for an outdoor stage in 1595, and it’s thought to be one of his happiest comedies. In Abbey's hands, the story’s theme of fathers and daughters comes to the foreground.
First, you open the program — yes, this dream has a program! — and find that a girl named Vivienne Abbey is cast as Rose Petal, this production's name for the Changeling Child in Shakespeare's original. Then you ask your neighbour: is she his daughter? The answer is yes.
When the lights come up and a forest floor is projected across the stage, a tiny sprite emerges into a moonlit world. Playing a character Shakespeare barely wrote — the Changeling Child exists in the original mostly as a thing to be fought over — the younger Abbey earns her place on stage in real time. She's a picture of innocence moving through an enchanted world her father has lovingly conjured.
Some of this magic is achieved through Kevin Lamotte’s lighting and projection design. Above the forest hangs a large luminous orb playing the ever-changing part of the moon. It’s as if we are back in Shakespeare’s outdoor amphitheatre, where the moon would have played herself, her phases requiring slight changes to the script from one night to the next.
Abbey has created the living, breathing outdoor world Shakespeare wrote for inside of a theatre. You can feel a safe, fatherly energy in the theatre, as if he’s watching over the whole tale, directing it with an encouraging, gentle hand. It’s comforting.
This dream is a grand old time
In fact, a gentle directorial hand is present in the entire performance. These are top-of-their-game actors having a grand old time, doing what each one of them does best.
Mike Nadajewski's Puck is awkward, not entirely competent, and having the time of his life. His mischief feels less like evil mastery and more like a teen boy trapped in a man’s body.
This Puck reaches out to form a connection with the audience, essentially inviting them into the dream. As the audience at last night’s opening filed back into the theatre after intermission, Nadajewski was already on stage, leading them through a clapping game — making the audience his accomplices. He’s a fun uncle who never grew up.
As the fairy king Oberon, André Sills commands the stage with formidable authority. Sara Topham's fairy queen Titania brings soft mother energy to the forest. Rose Petal seems to follow naturally in her wake, tracing Titania’s gestures with balletic grace, almost – almost – matching her would-be-mother's movements.
What lost little girl wouldn't follow this Titania through a forest? What lost little girl wouldn't want to rest in her lap? Every child needs a father and a mother, and in this production, for a few hours, we get to fantasize about having perfect ones. Until the ideal mother falls for a donkey and starts heehaw-ing. But still.
The ragtag troupe steals the show
From left: Jessica B. Hill as Helena, Thomas Duplessie as Demetrius and Mike Nadajewski as Puck, A Midsummer Night's Dream. (Stratford Festival 2026 Photo: David Hou). Submitted Photo
Sarah Dodd's Rita Quince — a gender-swapped reimagining of Shakespeare's Peter Quince — takes the stage to lead her troupe of hapless thespians through a farcical... Well, I don't know what that was!
Michael Spencer-Davis's Bottom is the butt of this production's joke. Rather than hiding behind a full donkey head, his transformation is suggested through outsized teeth, ears, and movement. When the besotted Titania drapes herself over his haunch, the contrast between her beauty and his obliviousness is exactly right for this dream.
Bottom is matched in comic energy by Aaron Krohn's belipsticked Francis Flute. Along with Steven Hao as Snug and Michael Man as Robin Starveling, the ragtag troupe of travelling thespians performing for the Athenians steals the third act completely.
The four Athenian lovers are beautifully cast. Jordin Hall's Lysander and Thomas Duplessie's Demetrius are dumb and ridiculous in equal measure — two men stumbling through the confusing forest that is modern dating. Vivien Endicott-Douglas brings a fierce, uncompromising quality to Hermia that makes her defiance of her father feel real.
But most especially there is Jessica B. Hill's ragey Helena — an avatar for rightful female anger. In this forest, a woman can strip down to her blouse and bloomers, stomp across the stage, and growl at the sometime-stupidity of men. This Helena is ready to burn it down, and Hill’s performance is utterly iconic.
But female rage has thoughts
Speaking of female rage, there is something very 21st century about this idyll. While the human characters are clothed in period skirts and suits from the late Victorian period, the vivid use of light and technology creates a contemporary counterbalance.
The movement belongs in our time, too. The clothes and text read historical, but the characters' physical gestures seem entirely contemporary. Nowhere more so than in Hill's Helena. The way she moves her arms to express disgust and frustration is a direct contrast to the pleasing way Titania uses her upper body. In this enchanted forest, women get to express their ugly feelings.
And yet, that’s fantastical. As Puck reminds us in the final moments of this dream: "You have but slumbered here, while these visions did appear."
Wherefore dost thou linger? Find your way to the place where the river meets the bridge. See what appears among the grasses.
Stratford Festival review: Abbey's Midsummer finds the funny
Director Graham Abbey and his cast lean into the absurdity of Shakespeare's beloved comedy
Author of the article:
Published May 28, 2026
From left, Jessica B. Hill as Helena, Thomas Duplessie as Demetrius and Mike Nadajewski as Puck appear in the Stratford Festival's 2026 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. (David Hou/Stratford Festival)
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For all of its magic, mischief and romance, the Stratford Festival’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream begins with a simple premise: director Graham Abbey understands this play is supposed to be funny.
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Intended by Shakespeare as froth – more entertaining diversion than sweeping tragedy or epic history – A Midsummer Night’s Dream remains perhaps The Bard’s most accessible comedy. Abbey and his cast take this as their starting point and run with it by embracing – and ramping up – the humour at every opportunity.
The result is a lively, fast-paced production at the Tom Patterson Theatre that is fully committed to the slapstick, double entendres and outright silliness that make this play so enjoyable.
There are double takes and asides to the audience, extended chases through the forest, over-the-top declarations of love and even a sight gag or three. The comedy rarely lets up and, more importantly, the cast – a mix of Shakespeare veterans alongside a few notable newcomers – is game.
Jessica B. Hill, who was wonderful in last season’s production of Dangerous Liaisons, is a standout as Helena, delivering a performance that is brash, self-aware and sharply funny. During the increasingly chaotic sequence involving the four young lovers lost in the woods, Hill captures Helena’s growing conviction that she’s somehow the butt of an elaborate joke.
That sequence – in which Lysander (Jordin Hill) and Demetrius (Thomas Duplessie), both bewitched by Puck’s love potion, aggressively pursue Helena while Hermia becomes increasingly bewildered and frustrated – is among this production’s comedic high points.
Hill’s disbelief plays beautifully against the wild protestations of love from the two ensorcelled suitors while Stratford newcomer Vivien Endicott-Douglas fully embraces Hermia’s increasing exasperation through physical comedy. At one point, she literally crawls across the stage in exhausted fury.
The entire sequence descends into a glorious chaos that involves shouting, chasing, wrestling and insults – “Shrimp!” – hurled in every direction.
Hall is also a memorable Lysander, particularly through his character’s recurring use of what seems to be a ukelele while wooing Hermia, and later, while enchanted, the reluctant Helena.
Mike Nadajewski, though, almost steals the entire production as the mischievous Puck.
In an intensely physical performance, Nadajewski tumbles, spins, creeps and crawls his way across the Tom Patterson stage with relentless energy while sharing a winking relationship with the audience throughout. His Puck knows the audience is there and seems delighted by the increasing absurdity around him.
Stratford veteran André Sills brings authority, and a dry wit, to his Oberon, delivering one of opening night’s best lines in the wake of the love-potion mix-up: “Puck, how much did you use?”
Sara Topham, another longtime company member, lends Titania an elegant presence that helps balance the surrounding chaos while providing a wonderful “hee-hawing” counterpoint to her own potion-induced lover, Michael Spencer-Davis’s ass-headed Nick Bottom.
The production’s other comedic triumph arrives during the play-within-a-play finale, involving The Mechanicals’ spectacularly incompetent performance of Pyrmaus and Thisbe.
Every member of this rustic “troupe” shines.
Spencer-Davis imbues his Nick Bottom with an overbearing confidence that completely belies his lack of ability. He truly does make an excellent ass, as Puck quickly discovers.
Sarah Dodd’s nervous Rita Quince effectively balances trepidation with forced bravado while attempting to bring this disastrous production together, while Aaron Krohn is wonderfully daft as Francis Flute playing Thisbe.
Sara-Jeanne Hosie earns some of the production’s biggest laughs as Snout, cast as the wall separating the doomed lovers. The increasingly ridiculous staging, including moments where Pyramus and Thisbe physically lift her legs to speak through the “crack” while she lies unconscious, pushes the joke just far enough.
Steven Hao is an enthusiastic Snug, fully relishing his mostly silent role as a not-very-threatening lion, while Michael Man provides another memorable comic moment when his Robin Starveling learns his toy piano will be replaced by a much more impressive instrument during the troupe’s wedding performance for Theseus (Evan Buliung) and Hippolyta (Ijeoma Emesowum).
Visually, the production makes full use of the Tom Patterson Theatre’s modern technical capabilities.
The set itself is deliberately sparse. The forest is suggested through a handful of distant trees while the stage is dominated by a large white felled tree and a smaller log that the actors climb, lounge upon and race across throughout the performance.
But the production’s use of projections, lighting and video design creates much of the fairy realm’s magic.
A large suspended moon overlooking the stage transforms repeatedly throughout the evening, at times becoming a blazing orb, Puck’s looming face or other surreal effects. Across the stage floor, audiences see crawling thorn vines, glowing magical pathways that trail behind Puck’s broom-sweeps and bursts of kaleidoscopic colour.
One particularly impressive sequence involves the entrance of the fairy court. The stage transforms into rippling water while a white curtain suddenly becomes a cascading deluge as the fairies emerge.
The costume work is equally strong. The fairies, clad in sylvan greens and browns, appear almost grown from the forest itself while The Mechanicals evolve from patched rural labourers into gloriously absurd amateur performers during their climactic play.
The production’s visual success is shared by Lorenzo Savoini, the set designer, alongside costume designer Joshua Quinlan, lighting designer Kevin Lamotte, and production and video design by Normal Studio.
But ultimately, what makes this production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream work is its willingness to embrace the play’s inherent ridiculousness.
Abbey’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream isn’t interested in overcomplicating Shakespeare’s comedy, or searching for some hidden darkness beneath its surface. Instead, Abbey and his collaborators lean fully into the chaos, confusion and foolishness.
In doing so, they create A Midsummer Night’s Dream that is consistently, genuinely and uproariously funny.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream continues in repetory at the Tom Patterson Theatre until Sept. 26.
Stratford Festival review: Magic and restraint collide in Cimolino’s farewell Tempest
A thoughtful, visually rich production is bolstered by exquisite stagecraft and riveting performances
Author of the article:
Aaron Kyte, Special to the Beacon Herald, Guest Author
Published May 26, 2026 • 3 minute read
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From left, Paul Dunn as Spirit, Geraint Wyn Davies as Prospero and Ashley Dingwell as Miranda in the Stratford Festival's 2026 production of The Tempest. (David Hou/Stratford Festival)
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Much has been made of the 2026 season being Antoni Cimolino’s last at the Stratford Festival. After nearly 40 years in the industry, first as an actor and eventually as the Festival’s artistic director, it would be easy to let his departure overshadow his final production as director, a milestone that must be as bitter as it is sweet.
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But it’s this very sense of opposition that makes the show work.
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The production’s greatest achievement lies in how fully it embraces The Tempest’s contradictions: wonder and cynicism, grace and cruelty, comedy and grief, spectacle and restraint. Fittingly, this final production from Cimolino after 14 years at the helm feels less like a victory lap and more like a meditation on legacy itself – a reflection on what remains after the magic fades away.
But it is magic that serves as the engine for the story, and the show’s opening scenes set the stage for this with great success. The storm that sets our play in motion is both the product of our characters’ powers, and a beautiful example of the magic of stagecraft. On a voyage back to Italy from Tunis, the seas prove too rough for the King’s ship. As the vessel is overtaken by waves, an enormous sail falls to the stage and transforms into a roiling sea through which the crew struggles and cries for mercy. It’s a dazzling sequence that makes full use of all available technical elements and the Festival Theatre’s full playing space, including the skies above.
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When the rough seas settle, it is Prospero at the centre of the story – exiled by his brother to an enchanted island, left to raise his daughter and plot his eventual vengeance. As Prosero, Geraint Wynn Davies’ command of the language is effortless, and he mines the text for every drop of meaning, finding unexpected humour, especially when playing against his daughter, Miranda, imbued with impressionable naivete by Ashley Dingwell. Wynn Davies navigates the role’s difficult tonal shifts with remarkable control, balancing frustration, rage and genuine pathos, often finding those shifts within a single line of text. Too often, Prospero can become either tyrant or sentimentalist, but here he remains fully human, fragile and weary underneath his bluster.
The direction and story remain clear, and the production moves smoothly. Prospero is always in control of the action, but is aided by his sprite, Ariel, rendered with kinetic energy by Marissa Orjalo, who darts through scenes with a bird-like energy. One of the production’s most striking images arrives in Act III, when the spritely white Ariel transforms into a menacing, crow-inspired harpy, unfurling an enormous wingspan that suddenly shifts the play from enchantment into nightmare. It is a moment of staging both beautiful and genuinely thrilling.
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The tragic and grotesque Caliban, meanwhile, is played with an appealing instability by Jonathan Goad. Covered in both fur and fins, Goad manages to tread the line between pitiable and loathsome, and the direction resists flattening Caliban into solely monster or victim, instead oscillating between pathetic vulnerability and rough comedy. That same comic energy carries into Stephano and Trinculo, whose scenes earned some of the biggest laughs of the night. Their drunken foolishness provides relief while still pointedly highlighting the show’s themes of greed and delusion.
Visually, the production is consistently rich. Imogen Wilson’s lighting enhances the many playing spaces effectively and emphasizes the magic when required. Julie Fox’s design blurs the lines between set and costume with ensemble actors occupying the stage as impossibly large sea creatures, covered in barnacles, coral, rocks and even mussels. The result is something imaginative and playful but not distracting: more evidence of this island’s unstable magic.
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But not all elements of the show work together as seamlessly. At times, the use of music detracts from, rather than adds to, the story. And in one particular scene, a piece of choreography involving enormous jellyfish (beautiful though they may be) seems out of a different production because the production’s real emotional force comes from its moments of restraint.
With this in mind, the final image strips everything away. Prospero stands alone on the barest possible version of the set to deliver the play’s closing lines: “As you from crimes would pardoned be, let your indulgence set me free.”
In the context of the artistic director’s departure, this line lands with particular poignancy. Prospero’s plea becomes inseparable from the director’s own farewell, which reminds us that, after nearly four decades in theatre, Cimolino’s magic is anything but rough.
The Tempest continues in repertory at the Festival Theatre until Oct. 24.
REVIEW: Cimolino's Tempest is more than a swan song
In his final Shakespearean direction at Stratford, Antoni Cimolino hands over the staff. The play, though, is asking us to look at what we're still hiding
When Geraint Wyn Davies stood at centre stage in the final scene of last night’s gala performance of The Tempest to speak directly to the audience, the significance of the moment was palpable. With outgoing artistic director Antoni Cimolino and legendary composer and director of music emeritus Berthold Carrière both seated in the audience at the Festival Theatre, the layers of meaning were poignant, but painful – like pressing on a bruise.
The Tempest is thought to be Shakespeare's last solo-written play, and its final scene is believed to be his personal goodbye to the theatre, with Prospero standing in for the playwright. “Let your indulgence set me free,” he says before exiting. And with Cimolino directing his final Shakespearean play after nearly 40 years at Stratford, with the last 14 as artistic director, the parallels are hard to miss.
A celebration tinged with mourning
This production is quite obviously a celebration of a successful era at Stratford. To sit in the Festival Theatre and watch Wyn Davies as Prospero, with Fiona Reid as Gonzalo and Carrière's original compositions filling the space, is to witness something historic. These are the people who built Canadian theatre into what it is, and here they are handing over the staff to the next generation of creators.
Marissa Orjalo as Ariel with members of the company, The Tempest. (Stratford Festival 2026 Photo: Ann Baggley). Submitted Photo
But the gesture is tinged with anticipatory mourning. How will we go on without these pillars of cultural knowledge? Prospero’s cloak and sorcerer’s staff are a heavy weight to bear. And there are unresolved plot points in The Tempest, even as Prospero retires into the wings.
Wyn Davies plays the grand epilogue with the quiet authority of a master at the top of his craft. His Prospero shows compassion, dignity and complexity, portraying a loving father – rather than a controlling duke, as the role is sometimes played. There is much more to this production than a personal message from Cimolino, and Wyn Davies’ emotionally resonant performance reveals it.
The plot of The Tempest follows Prospero, a sorcerer and deposed Duke of Milan, who has been living in exile on a remote island with his daughter Miranda for 12 years. He uses his magic — and his spirit servant Ariel — to conjure a storm to shipwreck his enemies on the island, setting in motion a plot designed to help him regain power, and a romance between Miranda and one of the shipwrecked men, Ferdinand.
The production's breathtaking opening scene shows what Stratford does that other theatres cannot: a storm at sea is rendered in full chaos, brought to life by billowing sails suspended from above, loudly clanking ship parts, cracks of thunder and lightning, and men climbing frantically up on-stage rigging to try to save their ship. When the characters survive this roiling sea, the audience feels their relief viscerally. It's a reminder that Stratford goes one step further with stagecraft to achieve what other theatres cannot. At the very least, it did so under Cimolino.
Another thing Cimolino did was embrace the uncomfortable truths that lurk beneath the surface of Shakespeare’s plays, and he didn't shy away from that here. When the playwright wrote The Tempest in 1610, as Britain’s colonial ambitions were starting to take shape, he was exploring themes of power and freedom.
At the centre of that story is Caliban, one of the island's original inhabitants and now Prospero's enslaved servant. How a production handles him tells you everything about its politics. In 2026, in Canada, Jonathan Goad's hairy and behoofed – but ultimately harmless – Caliban emerges from a cave hidden beneath the stage. It’s a direct acknowledgment of Canada's colonial history and our preference to keep it out of sight.
After Prospero departs, Caliban is abandoned on the island. He receives no apology for having been enslaved. Prospero's brother Antonio — who ousted him from the dukedom — is forgiven by Prospero, but in reality, he has never even asked for forgiveness.
In this production, Caliban is more comic than threatening. Some productions make him dangerous and monstrous, which is itself a colonial reading. Here, the comedy humanizes him, but it also softens the edges of an argument the play is making. The discomfort that Caliban's story should produce is present — but it must compete with an urge for celebration.
Nature, magic, and what lies beneath
Wyn Davies gives us a Prospero motivated not by revenge but by love for his daughter. He does not want his dukedom back so much as he wants Miranda safe from the dangerous world that exiled them both. It’s a tender reading of a play that is not always presented that way. Love – not control or coercion – is the way.
Members of the company, The Tempest. (Stratford Festival 2026 Photo: David Hou). Submitted Photo
Marissa Orjalo’s Ariel is naughty and a little bit funny. Dressed in an odd combination of swaths of fabric, and moving in twitchy, non-human ways, her unique performance was a hit with the audience.
Orjalo is not alone in her innovative use of movement. Throughout the production, minor cast members are tasked with becoming something other than human — a mound of moss, a cluster of molluscs, a tangle of branches. They commit to it completely. It is a testament to the depth of the ensemble at Stratford that even the smallest roles are inhabited with physical conviction.
And the original score of this production is inseparable from the movement mastery we are witnessing on stage. Knowing Carrière was in the house on opening night — 45 years of his genius helped build this theatre’s musical identity — gave his moody score an added emotional charge. Sound design by Ranil Sonnadara extended that work into the audience's space, pulling us into the wild, deserted island — inducing the same shift of consciousness the characters experience when they arrive on Propspero’s magical island.
Set and costume designer Julie Fox's inspired underwater world represents a prime example of the stagecraft audiences have come to expect at Stratford. Large shells double as stools. Actors play moving mounds of molluscs, rocks, branches, and moss. A massive rock structure forms a central structure for the play’s action, allowing the actors to move up and down in space.
The peak of the production comes when four large illuminated jellyfish move through the space like slow, glowing dreams. When an underwater dance sequence unfolds, characters move their arms like seaweed in a gently moving sea. Design and sound merge, reminding us we live within nature, not above it.
Fiona Reid's Gonzalo commands the stage in a way that prevents this production from feeling like a room full of men congratulating themselves. Her presence here — as an actor, as a figure in Canadian theatre — carries the same weight as Wyn Davies, as Cimolino, as Carrière. She earns her place in this valedictory company entirely.
Ashley Dingwell's Miranda makes this fantastical tale believable. She moves with strength, in tune with nature as much as with her father -- and her love for him reads as entirely sincere. When she falls for Ferdinand, it is clearly her own heart leading, not her father’s hand. That distinction is what allows Wyn Davies to come across as a loving father rather than a controlling old man, and that is not a small thing to pull off in this play.
From left: Paul Dunn as Spirit, Geraint Wyn Davies as Prospero and Ashley Dingwell as Miranda in The Tempest. (Stratford Festival 2026 Photo: David Hou). Submitted Photo
And yet. There are rocks beneath the surface of this calm water.
The Tempest is a play about colonialism. About who gets to be a leader, who gets to be free, and who must be pushed underground and kept out of sight so that the island's new order can feel clean and righteous. This is also a play about freedom and power and who gets to decide which is which. It is about the people who remain unseen, below the stage, while those above them make their graceful exits. Cimolino knows this, and his staging acknowledges it. But the swan song is also real, and it is magnificent, and sometimes the two things pull against each other.
The cave beneath the stage
While Cimolino is handing over the staff to the next generation of theatre-makers with this production, he’s also challenging them. Canada's polite, genteel attitude toward its colonial history is a way of keeping the monstrousness of that history hidden. In an era that prefers political celebration to historical reckoning, it's an easy habit to indulge, and one that art must attempt to counterbalance.
By choosing this play, Cimolino is not just saying goodbye. He’s saying to audiences: Don't look away. Go one step further. Just like Stratford does.
Stratford Festival review: A burst of colour and joy lights up Guys and Dolls
Donna Feore's high-energy production transforms the Festival Theatre stage into a neon-soaked spectacle of music, comedy and dance
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Published May 27, 2026 • Last updated 20 hours ago • 4 minute read
From left, Steve Ross, as Nicely-Nicely Johnson; Mark Uhre, as Nathan Detroit, and Gabriel Antonacci, as Benny Southstreet, co-star in the Stratford Festival's 2026 production of Guys and Dolls. (David Hou/Stratford Festival)
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During the opening moments of the Stratford Festival’s production of Guys and Dolls, the stage seems almost drained of colour.
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The actors in the ensemble emerge in dark-toned clothing, wandering beneath a “skyline” of glowing neon signs – Burlesque Beauties, Grand Follies and others – rendered largely in black and white.
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For an instant, this Guys and Dolls feels like an old film flickering to life, but then the orchestra kicks in and the Festival Theatre stage erupts in a riot of colour, movement and sound.
That eruption becomes the defining characteristic of director and choreographer Donna Feore’s exhilarating take on the classic musical comedy by Frank Loesser, Jo Swerling and Abe Burrows. In a time when the world can seem particularly grim, this production arrives as a burst of joyous escapism – vibrant, funny and overflowing with life.
The story itself, inspired by the colourful gamblers and gangsters of Damon Runyon’s short fiction, serves as a framework upon which the spectacle is built. Feore fills this production with dazzling choreography, rapid-fire humour and lavish musical numbers that keep the audience captivated until the final “curtain.”
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Feore and the Festival have assembled many of its musical theatre heavyweights for this production, and the result is a remarkably polished ensemble.
Dan Chameroy exudes an effortless confidence as gambler Sky Masterson. Smooth talking and impossibly poised, his Sky feels every inch the high roller who’s willing to bet on anything and everything. As Sky’s soon-to-be-lover, Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane shines, imbuing her earnest missionary, Sarah Brown, with a warmth and sincerity that’s bolstered by her soaring mezzo-soprano vocals.
The chemistry between Chameroy and Sinclair-Brisbane is palpable, helping them sell a romance that unfolds over the course of a few days. Their standout sequence arrives during the Havana number in Cuba, which becomes one of the production’s more memorable scenes. What begins as a flirtation over a couple of tropical drinks quickly spirals into chaos as dancers flood the stage and the sequence becomes increasingly frenetic. As the dance number changes into a full-on “bar fight,” Feore’s brilliant choreography elevates the controlled mayhem.
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As Nathan Detroit, Mark Uhre is a comedic marvel. Permanently frazzled, perpetually scheming and somehow both sharply dressed and thoroughly rumpled, Uhre captures the wide-eyed desperation of a man trying to juggle impossible circumstances. Nathan is scrambling to secure a location for his famous floating craps game while dodging a tenacious police officer, Lt. Brannigan (Nehassaiu DeGannes), and placating his long-suffering fiancee, Miss Adelaide. Adding to these complications is the arrival of an intimidating Chicago gangster, Big Jule (Juan Chioran), who is intent on rolling dice.
Jennifer Rider-Shaw is a wonderful Miss Adelaide, channelling a kind of Betty Boop energy complete with exaggerated mannerisms and deft comic timing. Her operatic voice gives her songs tremendous punch, particularly during Adelaide’s Lament, where every sniffle and cough lands perfectly.
Steve Ross and Gabriel Antonacci provide excellent comedic support as Nicely-Nicely Johnson and Benny Southstreet respectively. Like Rider-Shaw, both have impeccable timing and help elevate many of this production’s funniest exchanges.
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The dancers, meanwhile, are simply astonishing.
The Crapshooters’ Dance earned one of opening night’s largest ovations, and deservedly so. The number was astoundingly athletic, filled with flips, kicks and precisely synchronized movement. Feore’s choreography, coupled with the talent of these dancers, brings a vitality to the stage, with bodies moving in rhythm not only to the music but the cadence of the Runyonesque dialogue. Horn stabs and percussion flourishes punctuate movements throughout the production, fostering a connection between the text, music and dance.
These stunning sequences are matched, and enhanced, by the production’s sparkling visual design.
Michael Gianfrancesco’s set transforms constantly while maintaining the feeling of a stylized, neon-drenched New York City. Beyond the glowing signs of the city square, audiences are taken to Sarah’s humble mission, the tropical disarray of El Cafe Cuba and the sprawling sewer system where a desperate Nathan relocates his craps game. One particularly inspired touch has the dancers sliding onto the stage through a sewer pipe.
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Even the thrust stage floor itself, designed as a map of New York City streets, contributes to the atmosphere.
The neon signs that dominate the set shift colour throughout the performance, subtly reflecting changes in mood and tone. Combined with Bonnie Beecher’s lighting design, the effect is striking.
Dana Osborne’s costumers also reinforce the production’s colourful visual identity. Nathan Detroit and the other gamblers appear in sharp pinstripe suits and fedoras, while Adelaide and her dancers strut the stage in burlesque-inspired costumes.
Music director Franklin Brasz and his musicians also deserve special mention for their polished and propulsive performances.
By the time the final number arrives, and the entire cast takes the stage, Feore’s production has accomplished what it set out to do: deliver an evening of exuberant entertainment replete with colour, humour and movement. In these uncertain times, this production of Guys and Dolls feels less like nostalgia and more like a reminder of theatre’s power to provide pure joy.
Guys and Dolls runs in repertory at the Festival Theatre until Nov. 1.