For its 2009 season, The Shaw takes on a monumental and historic project with full productions of each play in Noel Coward’s famous Tonight at 8:30 collection. The Shaw’s 2009 productions represent the first time all ten short plays have been performed in repertory by a professional company since they were first produced by London’s Phoenix Theatre in 1935-36. The plays will be performed in sets of three, one on each of the Festival’s Niagara-on-the-Lake stages, with the tenth, the rarely produced Star Chamber, being the lunchtime production in the Royal George. And to celebrate this idea for the event that it is, on two separate occasions, we will present all ten in one day – an event we are appropriately naming “Mad Dogs and Englishmen”.
The complete 2009 season includes six additional full productions. The Shaw’s celebration of Coward’s witty and subversive world sits perfectly beside the work of house wit and subversive, Bernard Shaw. Bernard Shaw’s exhilarating The Devil’s Disciple, last produced at The Shaw in 1996, is directed in 2009 by renowned Polish director Tadeusz Bradecki, and presented in the Festival Theatre. In the Royal George Theatre, audiences can enjoy Shaw’s hilarious satire of philosophy, playwriting and acting, In Good King Charles’s Golden Days.Garson Kanin’s classic comedy Born Yesterday, directed by Neil Munro, will share the Festival Theatre stage. An enduring story of a corrupt tycoon and his not-so-dumb blonde girlfriend, the play was a huge hit on Broadway in 1946 with Judy Holliday as Billie Dawn.The Court House Theatre will house Eugene O’Neill’s romantic drama A Moon for the Misbegotten, directed by Joseph Ziegler. Continuing to program Canadian classics, Michel Tremblay’s phenomenal Albertine in Five Times, in a new translation by Linda Gaboriau and directed by Micheline Chevrier, will complete the Court House season.Photos by David Cooper.
Peter Krantz, Lorne Kennedy, Anthony Bekenn and Guy Bannerman
Craig Pike, Evan Buliung, Richard Stewart, Ali Momen and Peter Millard
Craig Pike, Evan Buliung, Micheal Querin and Fiona Byrne
Donna Belleville, Lorne Kennedy and Evan Buliung
Jonathan Widdifield and Peter Millard
Lucy Campbell and Evan Buliung
Donna Belleville, Evan Buliung, Jonathan Widdifield and Lorne Kennedy
Fiona Byrne, Craig Pike, Evan Buliung and Jim Mezon
Lucy Campbell and Donna Belleville
Fiona Byrne
Peter Millard, Richard Stewart, Peter Krantz and Ali Momen
Fiona Byrne and Evan Buliung
Fiona Byrne and Peter Krantz
Evan Buliung, Fiona Byrne and Peter Krantz
Richard Stewart, Evan Buliung, and Fiona Byrne
Craig Pike, Evan Buliung, Micheal Querin, Richard Stewart, Peter Krantz and Ali Momen
Fiona Byrne and Peter Krantz
Fiona Byrne
The cast
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