Stratford Festival announces casting for 2023 season
The Festival Theatre in Stratford, Ont. (Krista Dodson)
The Stratford Festival has announced its casting for the next season, including acclaimed Canadian actor Paul Gross as King Lear.
Gross will return to the Festival Theatre stage 23 years after playing Hamlet there.
Rent, Much Ado About Nothing, Monty Python’s Spamalot, Frankenstein Revived and Love’s Labour’s Lost are among some of the other shows coming next year.
The Stratford Festival says the 2023 season will be programmed about the theme of “Duty vs Desire.”
“Mark Twain once said that ‘history never repeats itself, but it does often rhyme.’ And so it gives us endless variations on recurring themes – themes that, since the dawn of drama, artists have explored on stage,” festival artistic director Antoni Cimolino said in a media release. “The works on our 2023 playbill all seem to me to reflect in some way the age-old tension highlighted anew by the challenges of the pandemic era: the tension between duty and desire. As we navigate a world reshaped by the past years, these plays may help clarify the importance of finding a balance between pursuing our own wants, needs and dreams and helping others fulfill theirs.”
Tickets for the 2023 season will go on sale for festival members beginning Nov. 6. Early-bird sales open to the general public Dec. 12.
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