Three directors at Stratford this season have grabbed Shakespeare by the throat and forced him to speak to 2025. Chris Abraham turns the comedy As You Like It into a tale of refugees building paradise after escaping a prison camp. Antoni Cimolino makes Time itself a character in romance The Winter’s Tale, using magical minimalism to bridge an impossible sixteen-year gap. And Robert Lepage transforms the tragedy of Macbeth into a blood-soaked biker noir, complete with leather cuts and switchblades.
These aren’t polite adaptations—they’re radical reimaginings that crack open Shakespeare’s texts to reveal their molten cores. What emerges is a season defined by duality and disruption. Characters slip between identities, sets transform from wastelands to wonderlands, and audiences find themselves caught between reality and illusion. Each production delivers its own mic-drop moments: a prison camp blooming into paradise, a statue coming to life, a motel morphing into a hall of mirrors. And each mounts a profoundly human drama.
These reviews will help you navigate Stratford’s audacious season: whether you’re drawn to Abraham’s tale of transformation, Cimolino’s time-bending magic, or Lepage’s noir-soaked mayhem, there’s revolutionary Shakespeare happening on these stages. The only question is which revolution you want to join.
As You Like It: A tale of 2 worlds
Shakespeare’s beloved pastoral comedy of love, exile, and transformation receives a boldly reimagined treatment under Chris Abraham’s direction. The tale follows Rosalind (Sara Farb), daughter of a banished Duchess (Seanna McKenna), who falls in love with Orlando (Christopher Allen), a young nobleman who is fleeing his murderous brother. When Rosalind is herself banished by her usurping uncle Duke Frederick (Sean Arbuckle), she disguises herself as a young man named Ganymede and escapes to the Forest of Arden with her cousin Celia (Makambe K. Simamba) and the court fool Touchstone (Steve Ross). There, amid a community of exiles led by her mother, Rosalind encounters Orlando again, and—maintaining her male disguise—proceeds to “cure” him of his lovesickness through an elaborate game of role-play that tests the depths of their mutual affection.
Abraham’s production amounts to two plays in one remarkable whole, with each half offering a radically different theatrical experience.
This As You Like It begins in a stark, militaristic winter — where a warehouse setting and prison camp atmosphere bring urgency and high stakes to Duke Frederick’s tyrannical rule. The first half’s dark palette and falling snow create a disorienting atmosphere . . . in which grim past or future conflict have we found ourselves, exactly? Gun-toting guards patrol chain-link fences that separate the privileged from the condemned, while refugees huddle in the forest shadows, planning their escape. This dystopian framework lends unexpected weight to the political machinations that drive the play’s early acts.
The transformation to the Forest of Arden in the second act is nothing short of miraculous. As audiences return from intermission, they are greeted by Steve Ross’s masterfully funny Touchstone, who breaks the fourth wall with contemporary jokes and orchestrates mass audience participation that pre-signals the production’s tonal shift. The stark prison camp and dark forest give way to a sunny, pastoral paradise filled with the sounds of farm animals and the sight of verdant growth. Ross’s Touchstone becomes our, well, touchstone for this transformed world — his wit serving as a bridge between the play’s darker and lighter elements. This dramatic shift is also anchored by Canadian singer-songwriter Ron Sexsmith’s original score, which helps weaves the production’s disparate elements into a harmonious whole. Sexsmith’s music ranges from haunting winter ballads to joyous summer reels and full-company productions that provide an emotional throughline that helps audiences navigate the production’s dramatic tonal shift.
Sara Farb delivers a tour-de-force performance as Rosalind, masterfully navigating both her courtly persona and her disguise as Ganymede with compelling charm, strength and authenticity. Her Rosalind begins as a sharp-witted courtier whose intelligence is clearly constrained by circumstance, then blossoms in exile as she leans into the liberating possibilities of her male disguise. Farb makes Ganymede distinctly different from Rosalind – and winkingly credible as a man – not a simple thing. Meanwhile, Christopher Allen provides the perfect counterpoint as Orlando, bringing energy, earnest strength and endearing passion to the role.
Aaron Krohn’s Jaques, styled as a brooding outsider in the vein of Johnny Cash or Waylon Jennings. emerged as a personal favourite, His melancholy observations serve as a necessary counterpoint to the forest’s increasing joviality, yet Krohn ensures that the character never becomes a mere killjoy. And his delivery of the famous “Seven Ages of Man” speech achieves something rare: it feels like an organic expression of character rather than a scheduled showcase moment. We understand why this particular Jaques would pause to reflect on life’s stages, and why others would stop to listen.
Abraham’s kinetic direction keeps the energy high throughout, with characters moving fluidly through and around set pieces, often venturing into and through the audience at high speed. The constant motion reflects the story’s themes of transformation. Characters scale fences, weave through audience aisles, and create impromptu performance spaces throughout the theatre. This immersive approach, combined with Sexsmith’s music, creates a unifying dynamism that transforms the entire theatre into the Forest of Arden, and makes us part of the new, sunnier world the exiles build in the show’s second half.
The production’s epilogue, delivered with knowing charm by Farb, becomes a meditation on the show’s duality itself, inviting audiences to embrace both the light and dark elements of the story—and by extension, of life itself. Her direct address to the audience feels less like Shakespeare’s traditional plea for approval and more like a provocative challenge: what will we make of these contrasting halves of the story? How do we reconcile darkness and light? The questions linger after the final bow, making this As You Like It not just a evening’s entertainment, but a profound exploration of how change—whether chosen or forced upon us—can lead to transformation.
The Winter’s Tale: Moving, minimalist magic
One of Shakespeare’s most intriguing and rarely performed works, The Winter’s Tale weaves together elements of tragedy and comedy into what scholars term a “romance.” The plot follows King Leontes of Sicily (Graham Abbey), whose unfounded jealousy sets in motion a chain of events that tears his family apart. Convinced that his pregnant wife Hermione (Sara Topham) is having an affair with his childhood friend King Polixenes of Bohemia (Andre Sills), Leontes orders his friend’s death, imprisons his wife, and ultimately causes the death of his young son Mamillius. When his newborn daughter Perdita is abandoned on the shores of Bohemia, Time itself intervenes to heal these wounds, leading to one of theatre’s most magical reconciliations . . . some sixteen years later.
For The Winter’s Tale, director Antoni Cimolino transforms the minimalist stage of the Tom Patterson Theatre into a canvas for exploring redemption, renewal, and the healing power of time. The production begins in an atmosphere of celebration, with games and revelry creating a deceptively light tone. Graham Abbey’s Leontes masterfully guides us through the king’s devastating psychological deterioration — his jealousy emerging not in grand gestures, but in simple observations, paired with the subtle acceleration of his verbalized paranoid thoughts. Each sentence builds hypnotically upon the last, until suspicion becomes certainty. Abbey makes the character’s descent believable through careful attention to the progression of his madness, turning what could be an implausible plot point into a devastating study of self-destruction.
The first half’s sparse staging emphasizes the human drama — with few props, but lots of people, and an intense focus on the relationships being severed. As Leontes’ paranoia grows, the initial collective celebration fractures into a series of banishments and separations, each exile carrying its own weight of tragedy. Yanna McIntosh delivers a tour-de-force performance as Paulina, the truth-telling noblewoman who becomes both the conscience of Sicily and the keeper of its greatest secret. Her confrontations with Leontes crackle with righteous fury, while Sara Topham’s Hermione brings grace and dignity to her trial scene, making her apparent death all the more heartbreaking.
In a dramatic transition that is a lesser version of that which occurs between the two halves of As You Like It, the production’s second half — which is set in Bohemia sixteen years later — explodes with fresh color and movement. Here, the stark simplicity of the Sicilian court gives way to a pastoral celebration where shepherdesses in flowing saris dance with prancing, priapic satyrs. Tom McCamus brings warmth and comic timing to his role as the shepherd who raised the abandoned Perdita (Marissa Orjalo), while Geraint Wyn-Davies’ scene-stealing Autolycus provides comic relief and welcome distraction as a charming rogue.
Lucy Peacock’s Time serves as more than just a narrator of the sixteen-year gap—she becomes a central figure in the production’s meditation on mortality and redemption. Her appearances frame the play’s action, beginning with a haunting silent moment with young Mamillius, and returning at the end to remind us of time’s inexorable flow. The production makes wonderful use of rolling balls throughout, creating a visual metaphor for fate’s unpredictable course. An especially enjoyable moment comes during a casual game of bocce between Polixenes (Andre Sills) and Camillo (Tom Rooney), where their friendly competition (in which the audience takes a keen interest) adds layers of meaning to their discussion of change and constancy.
As the play moves toward its famous statue scene, where art and life mysteriously merge, Cimolino’s production achieves a rare balance between skepticism and wonder. The final tableau leaves audiences suspended between joy and sorrow, understanding that while some wounds can heal, others leave permanent scars. Time may bring redemption, but it cannot erase the consequences of our actions—a truth embodied in the exquisite, bittersweet silent reunion of the play’s closing moments.
This Winter’s Tale affirms that second chances are certainly possible, but it reminds us that they come at a cost. The production’s elegant simplicity, compelling performances, and thoughtful integration of Time as both theme and character make this a deeply moving, magical exploration of loss, forgiveness, and the possibility of renewal.
Macbeth: Bikers and blood
Shakespeare’s shortest and bloodiest tragedy receives an electrifying reimagining in Robert Lepage’s audacious new production. The Scottish play’s tale of murderous ambition centres Macbeth (Tom McCamus), a trusted warrior who is spurred by supernatural prophecy and the goading of his wife Lady Macbeth (Lucy Peacock), to murder his way to the crown, only to descend into paranoid tyranny. Here, the tale finds startling contemporary resonance in the violent world of 1990s Canadian biker gangs.
Aesthetically, this Macbeth filters Shakespeare through the lens of Sons of Anarchy, with the thanes reimagined as leather-clad bikers, whose “patches” and “cuts” visually track their rising and falling fortunes. Lucy Peacock’s Lady Macbeth — channeling fierce maternal crime boss energy, in her jeans and red wig — could be SoA’s Gemma Teller Morrow transplanted to the Stratford stage. Lepage trades medieval daggers for switchblades and arrows for bullets, in the process turning the brutality up to 11.
The true star here is the stunning visual design by Creative Director Steve Blanchet and Set/Props Designer Ariane Sauvé. The production opens with a full cinematic credit sequence backed by pulsing rock music, immediately establishing its contemporary aesthetic. The core set, a two-storey 1970s motel that serves as the gang’s headquarters, is a masterwork of theatrical engineering. Like an enormous puzzle, its multiple rooms swing around and connect, disconnect and reconfigure themselves continuously, creating ever-shifting perspectives that mirror Macbeth’s increasingly fractured reality.
The opening scene sets the tone for the production’s visual innovation, featuring a perspective-bending sequence on water that is later echoed in Lady Macbeth’s haunting death scene. The witches, reimagined as edgy drag performers, emerge from this noir-ish world with unsettling authenticity. And a translucent curtain enables ghost effects that genuinely startle, while cleverly manipulating depth perception to make both the stage space and gang numbers seem larger than life.
However, the spectacular staging and visual innovation overshadow the human drama at the play’s core. Unlike a film or tv show, where the director can guide audience focus through close-ups and careful framing, this production’s massive scale and split-screen effects sometimes leave viewers struggling to connect with the performers’ emotional journeys. It feels at times like the actors are competing with the massive set’s constant motion and the production’s cinematic flourishes — which makes it challenging to fully engage with the play’s central question: whether Macbeth’s bloody acts are crimes of opportunity, prompted by supernatural manipulation, or inevitabilities that follow directly from the hubris and rot at the core of his character.
The production leaves us with an ultimate, visceral and over-the-top mic drop finale. The restoration of order—typically a perfunctory, subdued conclusion—becomes a stunning final assertion of this production’s biker aesthetic, delivering one last jolt of adrenaline as the curtain falls. While this Macbeth sacrifices psychological intimacy for spectacular effect, it offers a truly unforgettable ride through Shakespeare’s exploration of ambition, violence, and the price of power.
Final thoughts
Stratford’s 2025 Shakespeare season demonstrates once again the Festival’s remarkable ability to make centuries-old texts feel urgently contemporary. Each production finds its own unique path to relevance: Chris Abraham’s “As You Like It” uses stark contrasts to explore transformation and renewal; Antoni Cimolino’s “The Winter’s Tale” employs masterful and magical minimalism to probe time’s healing power; and Robert Lepage’s Macbeth boldly reimagines tragedy through a contemporary lens.
These innovative and compelling productions — from three different genres, with three different aesthetics — remind us that Shakespeare’s works are not museum pieces, but living entities which are hungry to meet us where we are, and speak to us with urgency and imagination.
Check out one, two or all three. You’ll be captivated: they’ve got a lot to say.
Tickets to the Stratford Festival productions of As You Like It, The Winter’s Tale and Macbeth are available at stratfordfestival.ca.
© Scott Sneddon, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
