Plummer, Rose, Etc. Set for 2008 Stratford Festival

With Shakespeare firmly established as the centrepiece of the 2008 playbill, the Stratford Festival of Canada now announces two musicals and a Shaw classic.

The season will feature The Music Man and Cabaret, and Christopher Plummer will return to the Festival stage to play Julius Caesar in Caesar and Cleopatra.

"Our goal for this Festival is to illuminate Shakespeare's work and give audiences an exciting variety of theatrical experiences," says general director Antoni Cimolino. "We're very proud of the season we're putting together and also delighted that Christopher Plummer will be joining us again."

The Avon Theatre, which housed this summer's hit My One and Only, will continue in the musical tradition with The Music Man and Cabaret. The Music Man, one of the most successful and popular musicals ever written, will be directed by Susan H. Schulman, who directed To Kill a Mockingbird this season.

Cabaret will be directed by Amanda Dehnert, who Mr. Shipley says is quickly becoming one of the leading forces in American musical theatre. She is a resident director at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, RI, where she has directed such shows as The Fantasticks, My Fair Lady and West Side Story.

Caesar and Cleopatra will be directed by co-artistic director Des McAnuff and will feature Christopher Plummer as Julius Caesar. Mr. Plummer's leading lady will be Broadway and film sensation Anika Noni Rose. Rose won the praise of New York theatre critics for her performance in the hit show Caroline or Change, for which she won a coveted Tony Award. She is also known worldwide for her portrayal of pop singer Lorrell Robinson in the movie Dreamgirls.

The Stratford Festival has produced only two Shaw works in its history: Saint Joan, in 1975, and Arms and the Man, in 1982. "Caesar and Cleopatra is a play Christopher Plummer has wanted to do for some time and I fell in love with that idea," saysMcAnuff. "I think it's a terrific part for him."  Plummer last appeared at the Stratford Festival in 2002 in a production of King Lear that went on to New York's Lincoln Center. The 1996 season featured Plummer in Barrymore, which also went on to Broadway, where Plummer won a Tony Award for his performance.

In July, the Festival announced it would be changing its name to the Stratford Shakespeare Festival to reflect its commitment to Shakespeare and the classics. The playbill includes Shakespeare's Hamlet, Romeo and Juliet, All's Well That Ends Well, The Taming of the Shrew and Love's Labour's Lost, as well as the classic plays The Trojan Women by Euripides, Fuente Ovejuna by Lope De Vega, and Emilia Galotti by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing.

Several new works are still in the planning stages for 2008 and will be announced as soon as details are confirmed.

The Stratford Festival box office will open to the general public on Dec. 1, 2007, a month earlier than usual. The American Express Front of the Line presale begins Nov. 10. Members of the Stratford Festival will be offered advance booking opportunities beginning Oct. 15.

Visit www.stratfordfestival.ca for more information.

Photo of Christopher Plummer by Walter McBride/Retna Ltd.

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