Stratford Festival: Colm Feore, Amaka Umeh and a slew of brand-new faces cast in comeback 2022 season

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Ontario’s Stratford Festival is welcoming back its ensemble at last, with 125 actors set to appear on the not-for-profit theatre company’s stages in 2022.

On Wednesday, Stratford artistic director Antoni Cimolino announced casting for a 10-play season, which begins rehearsals later this month.

While the company did put on a series of shows in short runs, mostly outdoors, in 2021, this marks the troupe’s return to the long contracts (six to nine months) and repertory (actors performing in more than one play) that distinguish it from most of the North American theatre ecology.

“It’s going to be a challenge, but it’s going to be exciting,” said Mr. Cimolino, outlining the protocols aimed at keeping actors safe.

“We recognize that COVID exists. We need to deal with it, we need to get vaccinated and we need to be careful and respectful. And it’s that way that we’re going to move forward, but we will move forward.”

Performers on board for the challenge of Stratford’s comeback season include well-known names such as Colm Feore, but also at least 39 actors making festival debuts.

That’s quite the influx of fresh blood given that six of the shows were originally programmed for 2020 – and that almost all of the actors remain the same from when casting for that cancelled season was announced in 2019.

Mr. Feore, a swashbuckling star of the stage also known for screen roles including Bon Cop, Bad Cop and Umbrella Academy, is ready again to take on the title roles in Richard III and Molière’s The Miser, both directed by Mr. Cimolino. And he is still set to make festival history by speaking the first lines in front of an audience on the new $72-million Tom Patterson Theatre stage (at the first preview performance of Richard III on May 10).

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Likewise, Amaka Umeh, a rising star, will again take the lead in Hamlet on the Festival Theatre stage in a production directed by Peter Pasyk. That will be history in a different way, as Ms. Umeh becomes the first Black woman to play the melancholy Dane at Stratford.

All’s Well that Ends Well will feature Jessica B. Hill as Helena, Seana McKenna as the Countess of Roussillon and Ben Carlson as the King of France – just as it would have in 2020. Hamlet-911, a new play by Ann-Marie MacDonald that was originally set for 2020, has likewise held onto star Mike Shara, who will play a fictional actor who lands the role of Hamlet at the Stratford Festival but gets sucked into a mysterious underworld.

Even Chicago – the enduring popular musical – will feature Chelsea Preston as Roxie Hart, Jennifer Rider-Shaw as Velma Kelly and Dan Chameroy as Billy Flynn as planned, despite a controversial decision to have some cast members reaudition last fall.

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The vast majority of the would-be 2020 ensemble were simply offered their parts back, but some declined owing to having landed parts in television shows or having accepted gigs elsewhere.

Tom Rooney, for instance, will be back at the Shaw Festival in 2022 to reprise his lead performance in Cyrano de Bergerac. André Sills has stepped up instead as Buckingham in Richard III, while the underrated Rylan Wylkie will replace Mr. Rooney in the key role of Parolles in All’s Well That Ends Well.

Time has taken others away from Stratford forever. Martha Henry, the festival legend who did return for last summer’s reduced season, died in October at age 83 and so cannot play the Duchess of York in Richard III as originally planned. Taking that role instead will be Diana Leblanc, a close friend and collaborator of Ms. Henry’s.

The bulk of the new-to-Stratford actors are landing in the four plays that are new to the 2022 lineup.

Death and the King’s Horseman, a 1970s classic by the Nobel prize-winning Nigerian playwright Wole Soyinka, will feature Anthony Santiago in the lead role of Elesin. Ms. Umeh will play a part called the Praise-Singer, while Graham Abbey and Maev Beaty (Claudius and Gertrude in the Danish play) will portray the colonial authorities who try to interfere with a Yoruba tradition.

Little Women, a new play by Jordi Mand based on Louisa May Alcott’s novels Little Women and Good Wives, has found its women in Brefny Caribou as Beth, Allison Edwards-Crewe as Jo, Veronica Hortiguela as Meg and Lindsay Wu as Amy.

Every Little Nookie, a new sex comedy by Sunny Drake that mines the boomer-millennial generational gap, will feature Marion Adler and John Koensgen as representatives of the older generation and Rose Tuong as their daughter, who they discover hosting a swingers party to make cash in their suburban home.

Finally, 1939, a play by Jani Lauzon and Kaitlyn Riordan that imagines a version of All’s Well That Ends Well being performed in a church-run residential school in Northern Ontario, will feature Richard Comeau, Wahsonti:io Kirby, Kathleen MacLean and Tara Sky as students or formers students.

Tickets for the Stratford Festival 2022 season are set to go on sale in March.

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