Shows by, about local legends highlight RMTC bill

After seeing a staged reading of fareWel at the first-ever Kiyanaan Indigenous Theatre Festival last winter, featuring members of the original 1996 cast, artistic director Kelly Thornton was eager to bring Ian Ross’s groundbreaking show to Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s stage for a revival.

And when Ross — the beloved local playwright, storyteller and mentor through the RMTC’s Pimootayowin Creators Circle — died suddenly in November at the age of 57, Thornton’s resolve grew even stronger to introduce a new generation of audiences to the production, which in 1997 made Ross the first Indigenous person to win a Governor General’s Award for English drama.

This fall, as she prepared the program for her sixth season at the company’s artistic helm, Thornton reached out to both Ross’s family and to Prairie Theatre Exchange — which staged the original production — to ask for their clearance and guidance to bring audiences back to the fictional Partridge Crop Reserve for the socially conscious dark comedy.

With their permission, RMTC, in partnership with the National Arts Centre Indigenous Theatre in Ottawa, has slated fareWel as the closing production of the 2026-2027 season on the John Hirsch Mainstage. Set to run from May 5 to 29, the production will be directed by Kevin Loring, the Ottawa theatre’s artistic director.

Thornton, who worked in close collaboration with Ross in developing Pimootayowin Circle — a program that provides mentorship opportunities for first-time and aspiring Indigenous playwrights — says the remount is one way to keep that work going. An ultimate goal for the company is to develop a standalone, Indigenous-run theatre company through the RMTC umbrella, similar to the program at the National Arts Centre, she says.

Casting announcements for the production have yet to be made.

While fareWel is the only remount of a locally written contemporary classic on the docket, RMTC is also set to bring to its mainstage a revival of last season’s Shakespeare in the Ruins production of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, with SIR’s complete cast — Arne MacPherson, Cory Wojcik, Tom Keenan, Liam Dutiaume and Mackenzie Wojcik — returning to bring the outdoor staging indoors.

With director Rodrigo Beilfuss returning, Thornton says she expects the production (March 24 to April 17) to captivate audiences; she says she’s never seen a clearer interpretation of Beckett’s renowned work of absurdist commentary.

As with fareWel, Thornton says, the SIR production deserves “more life” on Winnipeg stages.

Though the remount of Ross’s play is earmarked to close the mainstage season, work from another Manitoban playwright has been chosen to open it: Jessy Ardern’s adaptation of Cyrano de Bergerac.

Ardern, who will appear on the Tom Hendry Warehouse stage next month in Trish Cooper’s parental revenge comedy Holland, will take the show on the road to Edmonton and London, Ont., for productions with the Citadel and Grand theatres. Starring Stephanie Sy as Roxane and Scott Shpeley in the title role, with Amanda Goldberg directing, audiences can catch a whiff of Cyrano from Oct. 7-31.

Despite its secretive subject matter, Thornton couldn’t wait to talk about the world première of Intrepid, a dramatized “play with music” about Winnipeg spymaster Sir William Stephenson — the inspiration for James Bond — set on the eve of American entry into the Second World War.

Written by Alex Poch-Goldin, who is currently bringing moustachioed gravitas to the role of Hercule Poirot in RMTC’s production of Murder on the Orient Express, Intrepid rounds out the character of Stephenson, who was a close contact of Winston Churchill — a juicy role — and of Ian Fleming, Bond’s creator. With Thornton directing, Intrepid tiptoes into the spotlight from Jan. 13 to Feb. 6, 2027.

One of Winnipeg’s top actors, in Thornton’s opinion, will do double-time in My Name Is Lucy Barton, adapted for the stage by Rona Munro from the novel by Elizabeth Strout. Jennifer Lyon plays both a hospitalized woman and her mother in the solo show, which will be helmed on the mainstage by Emma Welham — soon to graduate from the National Theatre School — in her RMTC directing debut (Feb. 17 to March 13, 2027).

In the mainstage’s holiday slot (Nov. 25 to Dec. 19), this past season occupied by the box-office smash Elf, the company heads to Avonlea for Anne of Green Gables — The Musical.

Adapted by the late humorist Donald Harron (known for his Charlie Farquharson character) with music by Norman Campbell, the musical adaptation of L.M. Montgomery’s signature work premièred in 1965 at the Charlottetown Festival, where it ran for more than 50 years on an annual basis. Julie Tomaino, the choreographer and former Rockette who directed Elf this past season, returns to RMTC to lead the charge.

At the Tom Hendry Warehouse, the season is set to open with a play Thornton can’t say the full title of out loud in the theatre.

Created by Rebecca Northan, Bruce Horak and Ellis Lalonde of Ontario company Spontaneous Theatre, Goblin: Macbeth (Oct. 21-Nov. 7) follows three creatures who find the complete works of William Shakespeare before deciding to mount the bloodiest work they can find — though Titus Andronicus might like to have a word. The show — called the “stage equivalent of a theme-park funhouse ride” by the Calgary Herald — ran at Stratford in 2023.

The Warehouse season continues with the televised cooking drama Comfort Food. Written by Toronto’s Zorana Sadiq, the play follows a cooking show host who’s nearly exhausted her brand as a young mom when her son, KitKat, is brought back on air to give the ratings a boost. Thornton hopes the Crow’s Theatre import, which features live cooking, sizzles. (Nov. 18 to Dec. 5).

Two literary adaptations close the Warehouse season, including one made famous in an onscreen adaptation directed by the late Rob Reiner.

A famous author gets taken care of by a doting reader in Stephen King’s Misery, running from Jan. 27 to Feb. 13, 2027, under the direction of Ardith Boxall. Written for the stage and screen by William Goldman (The Princess Bride, Marathon Man), the thriller will also tour the province as RMTC’s regional production.

And finally, Canadian writer Andre Alexis’s bestselling novel Fifteen Dogs will visit the Hendry from March 3 to 20, 2027. Adapted by Marie Farsi, the show — in which Greek gods Apollo and Hermes bet that any animal would die unhappy if it possessed human intelligence — will be directed by RMTC’s Life of Pi director Haysam Kadri in partnership with Alberta Theatre Projects.

winnipegfreepress.com/benwaldman