Stratford Festival

When Helen cures the King of France of an ailment that has confounded every other doctor, he grants her lifetime wish: the marital hand of the aristocratic courtier Bertram. However, Bertram proves a reluctant husband and immediately heads off to war, leaving Helen with a seemingly impossible riddle to solve in order to seal their marriage.

Pursuing two respectably married women at the same time, a would-be seducer fails to anticipate that his targets will, quite literally, compare notes. Nor has he reckoned on the mischievous spirit in which the wives will use their wits and wiles to teach him the error of his ways. Set in the 1950s, in a town not unlike Stratford, Ontario, this production brings Shakespeare's rollicking comedy close to home - and close to our hearts.

Who would have guessed that Antipholus's long-lost identical twin had just arrived in town? Or that his servant, Dromio, also has a newly-landed identical twin? Sheer confusion and delightful nonsense reign in Shakespeare's most madcap comedy, culminating in a series of misunderstandings that brings everyone to the brink of hysteria.

This scintillating production of Shakespeare’s boisterous comedy will stir your emotions even as it challenges you with its pointed social commentary. Is the story of Kate and Petruchio one of courtship or of conquest? The breaking down of a defiant spirit or a breakthrough that liberates a heart deprived of love? You decide – but either way, this is an experience not to be missed!

Renowned for his extreme generosity, the Athenian nobleman Timon has fallen prey to flatterers and false friends, on whom he showers lavish gifts and extravagant hospitality. His loyal steward, Flavius, tries to warn him of the financial consequences of such reckless expenditure, while the cynical philosopher Apemantus mocks his naivety, but Timon ignores them both. When his money runs out and his creditors demand payment, Timon sends confidently to his "friends" for help. When all refuse him, he throws one last party - one that heralds a dramatic change in his attitude to the world.

The swaggering Petruchio agrees to marry the spitting hellcat, Katherine.

A scholarly king and his three companions swear off the society of women for three years, only to have a diplomatic visit from a French princess and her three ladies-in-waiting thwart their intentions.

The swaggering Petruchio agrees to marry the spitting hellcat, Katherine.

Filmed version of the 2019 Stratford Festival production.

The ultimate royal family crisis. Prince Hamlet's father is dead, poisoned by his uncle, who has usurped the throne and married his mother, the Queen. When the dead King's ghost appears, commanding his son to revenge his foul and most unnatural murder, Hamlet is set on a course of action that can only end in the destruction of a dynasty and his own extinction.

This radically reimagined version of Shakespeare's romantic tragedy Romeo and Juliet invites you into an up-to-the-minute world of sound and music, a world in which the entrenched hostilities of an older generation are challenged by the passions of young people who only want to love.

In mythical Ilyria, Viola and her twin brother Sebastian are separated after a shipwreck. Disguised as a boy, Viola enters the service of Duke Orsino who sends her off to woo the Countess Olivia on his behalf. Confusion and misguided love eventually leads to the happy reunion of the siblings.

Henry, tracing his descent from Edward III, has claimed the French crown. Assured by the Archbishop of Canterbury that right is on his side, and needled by the Dauphin’s insolence, he prepares for war.

Beatrice and Benedick, two quick-witted and sarcastic individuals are happily single, but their friends believe they would make a great romantic match. Set in the Early Modern world, an era of ever-changing attitudes towards marriage and power, the play presents a society at once filled with progressive feminist impulses and countervailing forces rooted in traditional patriarchal values. With his astonishing wit and insight, Shakespeare explores the complexities that underlie these growing social tensions.

Exiled Prospero lives on a desolate island with his daughter, Miranda. When Prospero's usurping brother sails by the island, Prospero conjures a storm that wrecks the ship and changes all of their lives.

Young lovers Hero and Claudio, soon to wed, conspire to get verbal sparring partners and confirmed singles Benedick and Beatrice to wed as well.

In Kenya in 1952, Mercy, a restaurant proprietor, is hired to cater the impending visit of Princess Elizabeth, soon to be Queen. In 2015, another story unfolds in London, England, where a young Kenyan-born Canadian, Tia, is working as an intern on a TV drama series about the British royal family – while also pursuing a writing project of her own. These parallel narratives seem only coincidentally connected – until a surprising twist reveals a deeper relationship between the two.

Staged at the Stratford Festival and named on many 2018 year-end critics “best of” lists, the Stratford Festival’s “riveting” and “exhilarating” (The New York Times) production of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, has been called “the show of the decade… a landmark production for the Stratford Festival. Maybe for William Shakespeare, too” (The Globe and Mail), and “the greatest contemporary staging of this play that I have ever seen” (Chicago Tribune).

Shipwrecked on the coast of Illyria, Viola adopts a male disguise and enters the service of Duke Orsino, only to find herself part of a triangle of unrequited love. Meanwhile, in the household of the Countess Olivia, Sir Toby Belch and his unruly companions trick Olivia's strict and disapproving steward, Malvolio, into believing that she loves him.

In a revolutionary adaptation by Brad Fraser, this Richard is the story of a king who believes that God gives him the right to live above the rules and who ultimately suffers the consequences. The story is embedded in a time of great freedom that is soon crushed - the late 1970s and early '80s: when lives were lived at great volume against a suffocating strain of conservatism and fear. Fraser's adaptation maintains Shakespeare's text but draws on sources beyond Richard II.