Three years after his divisive turn as the titular monarch in Shakespeare’s “King Lear,” the Canadian actor Paul Gross will return to the Stratford Festival next season in a new production of “Waiting for Godot.”
The star of the hit television series “Due South” and “Slings and Arrows” is to play the philosophical tramp Vladimir in the Samuel Beckett classic, opposite Tom McCamus’s Estragon. Director Molly Atkinson’s production at the Festival Theatre will additionally feature Jonathan Goad as Pozzo and David W. Keeley as Lucky.
Gross is one of several big names announced Monday as part of the upcoming lineup, which will mark the final season under the leadership of outgoing artistic director Antoni Cimolino.
McCamus, who took on the lead role in Stratford’s much-derided revival of “Macbeth” this season, will also appear next year as Willy Loman in “Death of a Salesman,” Arthur Miller’s tragic exploration of the mirage that is the American dream. The Stratford regular will reunite with his “Macbeth” co-star, Lucy Peacock, who will play Willy’s wife, Linda Loman.
Meanwhile, Cimolino’s production of “The Tempest” will feature an ensemble cast including Geraint Wyn Davies as Prospero, Christopher Allen as Sebastian, Ben Carlson as Stephano and Marissa Orjalo as Ariel.
The season’s second Shakespeare production, the comedy “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” at the Tom Patterson Theatre, will star André Sills as Oberon, Michael Spencer-Davis as Bottom and Sara Topham as Titania.
And “Othello,” the final play by the Bard to open next season, will include Evan Buliung as Iago, Krystin Pellerin as Desdemona and Sills as the titular Moorish general.
As previously announced, Stratford’s remount of the musical comedy “Something Rotten,” directed and choreographed by Donna Feore, will feature the same principal cast from its 2024 run, with Mark Uhre and Henry Firmston as the brothers Nick and Nigel Bottom, respectively, alongside Starr Domingue as Bea, Jeff Lillico as Shakespeare and Dan Chameroy as the soothsayer Nostradamus.
A new revival of the classic musical “Guys and Dolls,” also directed and choreographed by Feore, will star a bevy of familiar faces. Chameroy will play the slick gambler Sky Masterson opposite Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane’s pious Sarah Brown. Joining them are Uhre as the crapshoot promoter Nathan Detroit and Jennifer Rider-Shaw as his fiancée, Adelaide. Steve Ross, who played Nicely-Nicely Johnson in Stratford’s last revival of the musical in 2017, will reprise his role in the upcoming run.
Other actors slated to perform in Stratford’s 2026 season include Deborah Hay, Fiona Reid, Richard Lee and Mike Nadajewski. The program, featuring 12 productions, is to begin April 21 and run through Nov. 1.
The casting announcement comes after the repertory theatre company recently revealed that British-Canadian theatre director and producer Jonathan Church is its new artistic director. He will officially assume his new role on Nov. 1, 2026, and will program his first season the following year.
