Mirvish unveils 2026-27 season, including 'Karate Kid' musical and an Agatha Christie whodunnit

The musical initially premiered in St. Louis in 2022, in what was then billed as a pre-Broadway tryout. But after receiving mixed reviews, producers seemingly cancelled those plans in favour of a UK tour slated to begin this spring. 

Later in the fall, “13 Going on 30” will mark its North American debut in Toronto, following its world premiere last year in Manchester, where it was met with largely tepid reviews. Unlike “The Karate Kid,” which has no clear plans after playing at Mirvish, the Toronto run of “13 Going on 30” is to serve as a pre-West End tryout, expected to feature a British cast. 

The musical, which is backed by Garner as its executive producer, follows an awkward teenage girl who wishes to skip over the painful years of high school, only to find herself waking up one day as a 30-year-old woman and the editor of a successful fashion magazine.

That many of the productions next season originated in the UK or elsewhere in Canada, instead of the U.S. or Broadway, was not intentional, explained Mirvish spokesperson John Karastamatis. “It was not done on purpose for geopolitical reasons,” he said in a phone interview. “But it’s funny how those geopolitical reasons became an unconscious power as we were programming the lineup.”

While touring productions of Broadway hits have typically filled out many previous Mirvish seasons, the upcoming slate only features two such shows. 

The first, arriving in September and opening the season, is “Hell’s Kitchen,” a semi-autobiographical jukebox musical featuring the songbook of American R&B artist Alicia Keys. It premiered on Broadway in 2024 and received a leading 13 Tony nominations that year but ultimately lost the award for best musical to “The Outsiders” which arrives in Toronto at the end of the current season.

The second Broadway tour is “Operation Mincemeat,” a riotously funny yet surprisingly moving British musical that’s loosely based on the Second World War deception mission of the same name. The five-person show is one of the most critically acclaimed musicals in West End history and won the Olivier Award for best new musical in 2024. It later transferred to Broadway the following year where it was met with a somewhat cooler response from American critics and audiences. 

The musical’s Canadian premiere, running from October to December, has been years in the making, said Karastamatis. “It’s a show that we’ve followed from the very beginning, when it was first being developed. And there was a scenario where it was going to play Toronto before it went to New York City, but that fell through for financial and logistic reasons.”

In February, Mirvish will present Agatha Christie’s “The Mousetrap,” her murder mystery that holds the record for the longest-running play in history, having run for more than 30,000 performances in London’s West End. The whodunnit previously ran in Toronto for more than 26 years, closing in 2004 and cementing it as the longest-running Toronto show to date, but this upcoming run marks the first time the original West End staging has been presented in North America.

The subscription season will close with two Canadian productions. “Inside the Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” a documentary-style concert that tells the true story of the SS Edmund Fitzgerald’s sinking in Lake Superior, all set to the music of Gordon Lightfoot, will open in April 2027. It’s created by Canadians Mike Ross and Sarah Wilson, the duo also behind “Inside American Pie,” a similar docu-concert production that ran in Toronto last year and is set to return again this spring. 

Finally, the seventh show in the subscription lineup, opening will be the Toronto premiere of Jovanni Sy’s “Salesman in China,” his historical drama recounting the true story of when Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman” debuted in China during the Cultural Revolution. Commissioned by the Stratford Festival, the play (presented in both English and Mandarin, with subtitles) opened there to positive reviews in 2024. The Toronto remount is expected to feature much of the same cast as its original run, including Singapore actor Adrian Pang in the lead role of Ying Ruocheng, the Chinese actor and director who brought “Death of a Salesman” to China.

“We saw when it was at Stratford, and we immediately thought that this is a show that should be seen by a larger audience, and that we believe a larger audience would appreciate,” said Karastamatis. 

This production marks the first time a Stratford Festival production has transferred to a Mirvish theatre in more than a decade. Its arrival in Toronto will also coincide with incoming Stratford Festival artistic director Jonathan Church’s first full season with the company. The British-Canadian theatre leader previously said that one of his priorities is to forge partnerships with other companies and to present Stratford productions elsewhere, including in Toronto. 

In addition to the seven shows on the subscription series, Mirvish’s season will also feature several bonus shows. They include the horror play “Paranormal Activity”; the docu-concert show “The Secret Chord”; the musical “Water for Elephants”; the return of the ABBA-inspired jukebox hit “Mamma Mia”; and “Dirty Dancing: The Musical.”