Rainbow Stage announces Rock of Ages, Frozen for 2025 season

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This article was published 27/11/2024 (357 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Rainbow Stage’s 2025 season will feature an award-winning tribute to arena rock, an adaptation of an icy animated classic, a revival of a made-in-Manitoba vampire musical, and the early phases of development for a localized version of A Christmas Carol, set in “Dickensian Manitoba.”

The company’s 71st mainstage season kicks off on June 26 with a healthy dose of Poison, when the Kildonan Park amphitheatre hosts a two-week run of the 1980s jukebox musical Rock of Ages. Then, in the August heat, Rainbow has decided to build a snowman, mounting a staged version of Frozen, the Academy Award-winning Disney musical about Elsa, Anna and the magical kingdom of Arendelle.

After teasing the 2025 summer slate for months, artistic director Carson Nattrass officially announced the plans in a cheeky video shared to the outdoor musical theatre company’s YouTube channel on Wednesday morning, cradling a stuffed Olaf snowman and wearing a Rock of Ages T-shirt under a zip-up sweater.

Joining Frozen and Rock of Ages in the 2025 slate is a remastered, encore staging of Afterlight, a vampire rom-com musical written by and starring Winnipeg’s Sharon Bajer and Duncan Cox, set to run from Oct. 23 to Nov. 2. Songs like Vampire in My Piano and Faces in Photos, along with the rest of the musical’s soundtrack, featuring Paul De Gurse on piano, are available to stream.

Though there’s no set date for its presentation, Rainbow Stage follows up its 2024 run of Joseph Sevillo’s Ma-Buhay with the development of another new work written by Manitoban theatre pros. A Manitoba Christmas Carol is a newly commissioned work penned by Nattrass and Cory Wojcik, a familiar presence on city stages who is Métis with Irish ancestry. (Wojcik’s Mixtapes from My Mom plays Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre’s Warehouse from Jan. 29 to Feb. 15).

“Set in Dickensian Manitoba, Ebenezer Scrooge deals in Métis land scrip for Marley & Scrooge Bank,” Nattrass explains in the season launch video. “Visited by the ghosts of Manitoba Christmas past, present and future, audiences will be transported to the turn of the 19th century, the birth of the province in 1870 and do so through the lens of the Red River Métis.”

While Rainbow has veered into the fall in recent years with its musical presentations, the summertime is still the bread and butter for the country’s longest-running open-air theatre company.

Rock of Ages will be directed by Winnipeg-raised Alexandra Herzog, who made her Rainbow Stage directorial debut with last summer’s staging of Mary Poppins.

Meanwhile, Frozen will be directed by Nattrass (who appeared in the original Canadian cast of Rock of Ages) from Aug. 7 to 24. While casting has yet to begin, the company says that in the new year it will be holding a special open call to find local young actors who will play the young versions of both Anna and Elsa under the dome in Kildonan Park.

Tickets for Rock of Ages, Frozen and Afterlight will be available at rainbowstage.ca on Monday.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com