If you like your theatre season with a little bit of everything, the Shaw Festival’s 2027 lineup gives you plenty to choose from. Its 65th season runs from March 31 to December 23, with musicals, murder mysteries, comedies, classic drama and Spontaneous Theatre spread across three stages.
Credit: Shaw Festival
The biggest change is at the Festival Theatre, where two musicals will share the stage during the main season for the first time in Shaw history. Rodgers and Hammerstein’s South Pacific, directed by Nina Lee Aquino, mixes romance, wartime tension and familiar songs including “Some Enchanted Evening.” Later, The Color Purple, directed and choreographed by Kimberley Rampersad, follows Celie’s journey through racism, sexism and abuse toward love, happiness and success, accompanied by jazz, blues and gospel.
You will also find darker laughs. Joseph Kesselring’s Arsenic and Old Lace follows drama critic Mortimer Brewster as he discovers that his seemingly respectable aunts have a macabre secret. Tom Stoppard’s Jumpers throws philosophy, gymnastics, murder, religion and romance into one deliberately unusual comedy.
At the Court House Theatre, Deathtrap follows struggling playwright Sidney Bruhl into deception, betrayal and possible murder. Bernard Shaw’s Arms and the Man returns Shaw’s work to the venue for the first time since 2017, while Grimm Tales revisits Cinderella, Snow White and Hansel and Gretel in their darker forms. Agatha Christie fans can get two compact mysteries with The Rats and The Patient.
The Jackie Maxwell Studio Theatre adds What Every Woman Knows, Goblin:Pygmalion and Lynn Nottage’s Intimate Apparel.
Artistic Director Tim Carroll described the season as an “irresistible playground for 2027,” combining “murder, mayhem, Shaw, Stoppard” with two very different musicals.
If you are planning ahead, Friends of The Shaw can buy tickets beginning November 7, while public sales start December 8. The Festival also plans more than 5,000 Beyond the Stage events, classes and activities.
Shaw Festival’s 2027 Season
FESTIVAL THEATRE
Rodgers & Hammerstein’s SOUTH PACIFIC
Music by Richard Rodgers
Lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II
Book by Oscar Hammerstein II and Joshua Logan
Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize winning novel Tales of the South Pacific by James A. Michener
Directed by Nina Lee Aquino
Previews: April 10 Closes: October 30
Romance blossoms for American sailors and Navy nurses stationed on a South Pacific island during the Second World War. Glorious, rousing songs – “Some Enchanted Evening,” “There’s Nothing Like a Dame” and “I’m Gonna Wash that Man Right Outa My Hair” – and a story of love, heartbreak, prejudice and survival make this one of the great theatrical experiences. A Rodgers & Hammerstein classic from the golden age of musicals.
SOUTH PACIFIC is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of The Rodgers & Hammerstein Organization. concordtheatricals.com
ARSENIC AND OLD LACE
By Joseph Kesselring
Directed by Jackie Maxwell
Previews: May 9 Closes: October 9
Some families have skeletons in the closet. This family keeps adding to their collection. Mortimer Brewster is a drama critic who just wants to get on with enjoying life by destroying bad plays and courting the beautiful Elaine Harper. But his aunts, Abby and Martha, are about to upset his plans. They may seem a perfectly respectable, indeed harmless, pair of elderly spinsters, but the Brewster sisters are anything but. The chaos and laughter spiral ever higher as each new arrival threatens to expose their macabre secret.
THE COLOR PURPLE
Based upon the novel written by Alice Walker and the Warner Bros/Amblin Entertainment Motion Picture
Book by Marsha Norman
Music and Lyrics by Brenda Russell Allee Willis Stephen Bray
Directed and choreographed by Kimberley Rampersad
Previews: June 26 Closes: October 31
Celie is a survivor. The story of her remarkable resilience follows her life in the American South from the early to mid-20th century. She endures racism, sexism and abuse, but ultimately finds love, happiness and success. Based on Alice Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel and directed by Kimberley Rampersad, this joyous musical – featuring an uplifting score full of jazz, blues and gospel – is a triumphant celebration of life.
JUMPERS
By Tom Stoppard
Directed by Tim Carroll
Previews: August 11 Closes: October 31
What happens when philosophy collides with gymnastics, murder, religion and love? An acrobatic philosopher – or is he a philosophical acrobat? – is murdered while a mysterious lady performs a striptease on a swing: it can only be the start of a Tom Stoppard play. Part murder mystery, part bedroom farce and part Shavian provocation, this dazzling and hilarious play is unlike anything written before or since. And yet, at its heart, it asks a simple question: where does thinking stop and feeling take over?
COURT HOUSE THEATRE
DEATHTRAP
By Ira Levin
Directed by Tara Rosling
Previews: March 31 Closes: October 8
How far should a playwright go for another hit? What if it has been 18 years since his last one? What if he’s had a string of bombs and he’s desperate? Well, if you’re Sidney Bruhl, you’ll consider deception, betrayal and even murder. But not everything is as it seems in his Connecticut home, where the plot twists come fast and furious (and funny). No wonder this comic thriller has been delighting audiences since 1978.
ARMS AND THE MAN
By Bernard Shaw
Directed by Alistair Newton
Previews: April 28 Closes: October 9
To Raina Petkoff, betrothed to a decorated hero, war seems glamorous. But when an enemy soldier climbs in at her window to escape the fighting, she sees the other side of the picture. Like any sensible fellow, Captain Bluntschli’s first duty is to his own survival; that’s why he’s armed with chocolates instead of bullets. This witty satire on romantic attitudes to war, heroism and marriage remains one of Shaw’s most popular comedies.
GRIMM TALES
Adapted from the Brothers Grimm by Carol Ann Duffy
Dramatised by Tim Supple
Directed by Jay Turvey
Previews: June 9 Closes: October 10
Forget the fairy tales you grew up with. These stories have teeth. Now more than two centuries old, the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales have stood the test of time so well that it’s easy to take them for granted. We know them, but how well do we remember them? Do we only know the sanitized versions? British poet Carol Ann Duffy brings some of the most beloved Grimm stories – including Cinderella, Snow White and Hansel and Gretel – to red-blooded, even gruesome, life.
AGATHA CHRISTIE’S THE RATS and THE PATIENT
Previews: September 11 Closes: October 10
Two bite-sized helpings of murder from the Queen of Mystery. In The Rats, secret lovers Sandra and David show up for drinks at their friends’ apartment, only to find that no one is home. They have no idea how much worse their evening is about to get.
In The Patient, Mrs. Wingfield has fallen from her balcony and is unable to speak. Gathered around her hospital bed, relatives must figure out if she jumped … or was she pushed?
JACKIE MAXWELL STUDIO THEATRE
WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS
By J.M. Barrie
Directed by Kimberley Rampersad
Previews: May 20 Closes: October 10
After a wealthy Scottish family discovers John, a university student, breaking into their house to read books in their library, they make him a deal. They’ll fund his education if he will marry their daughter, Maggie. John agrees to the loveless marriage and is oblivious to Maggie’s crucial role in his successful political career. This sly pre-suffrage comedy by J.M. Barrie is full of wit.
GOBLIN:PYGMALION
A Spontaneous Theatre Creation
By Bruce Horak, Ellis Lalonde, and Rebecca Northan
Directed by Rebecca Northan
Previews: June 16 Closes: October 10
You loved the electric unpredictability of Murder-on-the-Lake, now meet the Goblins.
The brilliant minds behind the smash-hit, Murder-on-the-Lake, return to the Shaw Festival with a showcase of Shavian shenanigans that will upset the applecart of everything you thought you knew about social class, the power of language, and Eliza Doolittle. The internationally acclaimed, Spontaneous Theatre, would like to introduce you to their alter-egos: Wug, Kragva, and Moog – three theatre-obsessed Goblins with an insatiable appetite for human literature, and an endless confusion about theatre etiquette. Having already dismantled Shakespeare, Sophocles, and Dickens, Canada’s most notorious Goblins are about to descend on The Shaw, seize control of our stages, and pepper Pygmalion with spontaneity and chaos.
INTIMATE APPAREL
By Lynn Nottage
Directed by Philip Akin
Previews: August 5 Closes: October 9
Esther, a seamstress since she was a child, dreams of a life as romantic as those of the people for whom she makes intimate apparel; but middle age is approaching and she still lives alone in a New York boarding house. When she receives a letter from a man working on the Panama Canal, the door to a different life seems to open. But love is not as straightforward as sewing lingerie. Lynn Nottage’s 2003 play is a moving modern classic.