Much Ado About Nothing and The Two Gentlemen of Verona: Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival announces 2025 season

The 36th annual program also includes The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] (Again) and The Dark Lady

FRESH OFF THE heels of the 2024 season, the Bard on the Beach Shakespeare Festival has announced its programming for 2025. Next year’s fest at Sen̓áḵw/Vanier Park features Much Ado About Nothing, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] (Again), and The Dark Lady.

Much Ado About Nothing, which features some of the Bard’s wittiest wordplay, and The Two Gentlemen of Verona will alternate in repertory on the BMO Mainstage next summer. The former centres on two couples, Beatrice and Benedick along with Claudio and Hero, in a story jampacked with secret love, courtship, warfare, and deception. The company is putting an ’80s musical twist on the latter, a tale of friendship and the crazy ways young love makes people behave. The role of Crab in Two Gentlemen of Verona will be played by an actual dog, the only canine role in the Shakespearean canon.

In the Douglas Campbell Theatre, the other two productions will play in repertory. Making its Bard on the Beach debut, The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (Abridged) [Revised] [Again] by Adam Long, Daniel Singer, and Jess Winfield has played to critical acclaim around the globe. Three players present a laugh-out-loud romp through all of Shakespeare’s canonical plays plus the famous sonnets. The Dark Lady, by Canadian playwright and actor Jessica B. Hill, tells the nearly lost story of Emilia Bassano, a multiracial, trilingual woman who was also a talented musician and England’s first female published poet. The question remains: Is Bassano the “Dark Lady” of Shakespeare’s sonnets? The show brings the two poets together in a complicated love story about art, desire, and ambition.

Season packs are now on sale at bardonthebeach.org.

Featured

Gail Johnson

Gail Johnson is cofounder and associate editor of Stir. She is a Vancouver-based journalist who has earned local and national nominations and awards for her work. She is a certified Gladue Report writer via Indigenous Perspectives Society in partnership with Royal Roads University and is a member of a judging panel for top Vancouver restaurants.

Articles

Metro Theatre ratchets up the suspense with And Then There Were None

Agatha Christie’s classic play is one of the legendary writer’s most haunting and sophisticated works

Applications for Realwheels Theatre's second Academy cohort are open now to March 15

Performing arts training program for D/disability-identified artists will run from September 2025 to June 2028

Theatre review: Primary Trust finds simple wisdom in small-town life

Andrew Broderick leads a versatile cast through Eboni Booth’s quietly endearing play

At Western Front, Fish Tail unfolds as an epistolary narrative, February 20

The one-woman performance and installation is by Montreal’s Marie Ségolène Brault

Théâtre la Seizième presents a staged reading of À toi, pour toujours, ta Marie-Lou, February 21 and 22

Sébastien David directs Michel Tremblay’s tragic play as part of the ÉCHO(S) series

Theatre review: Women of the Fur Trade is a clever, anarchic take on Canadian history

Every performance, under Donna Spencer’s breezy direction, is consistently funny and fully realized

A world premiere, Indigenous satire and musical, and more as The Cultch presents four March offerings

Tickets are now on sale for Little Red Warrior & His Lawyer, How to Disappear Completely, Children of God, and Beauty and The Beast: My Life

Metro Theatre presents Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None, March 1 to 22

After last season’s hit The Mousetrap, a new adaptation of a thrilling masterpiece by the queen of mystery hits the stage

Otosan makes a local comeback at Gateway Theatre, February 17 to 22

The puppetry show was a hit at last year’s Vancouver International Children’s Festival

Theatre review: Grandma. Gangsta. Guerrilla. dives into wild mix of immigrant dramedy, wartime recollection, and musical interludes

Cast finds both humour and heart in Ruby Slippers premiere by playwright Abi Padilla

Actor Andrew Broderick forges connections in Pulitzer Prize-winning Primary Trust

In the Arts Club production, his recently laid-off and all-too-relatable character Kenneth learns to face a world he’s long avoided

Theatre review: Wonderful Joe’s eccentric puppet characters fight the forces of gentrification

With a more melancholy undercurrent behind the biting laughs, Ronnie Burkett’s latest show gives voice to the marginalized and the misunderstood

Women of the Fur Trade cheekily shifts historical accounts to tell women’s stories of the Red River Resistance

Frances Koncan’s play looks at the fur trade through the perspectives of a Métis woman, a First Nations woman, and a settler woman

Pi Theatre presents the world premiere of A Taste of Hong Kong, March 6 to 15

Brought to the stage in association with Vancouver Asian Canadian Theatre, production stars Derek Chan in a tasting class and history lesson

Theatre review: Lasa Ng Imperyo (A Taste of Empire) delivers biting critique of the role of imperialism on the food we eat

The show by rice & beans theatre presented by PuSh Festival and Boca del Lupo moves swiftly with sharp satire

Grandma. Gangsta. Guerrilla. depicts a "sassy old lady" with a sense of humour

Abi Padilla’s new play draws inspiration from both of her grandmothers

Gateway Theatre presents Little Onion Puppet Company's Otosan, February 17 to 22

Heartwarming family adventure is told through puppetry, real wildlife projections, and an original score

A Doll’s House, Part 2 returns to Vancouver in Pacific Theatre presentation, February 5 to 23

Western Gold Theatre production explores the aftermath of Henrik Ibsen’s 1879 play A Doll’s House

At PuSh Festival, Dimanche delves into the surreal way people live amid climate change

Belgium’s Chaliwaté and Focus Company joined forces to create the fantastical nonverbal production

Puppeteer Ronnie Burkett’s Wonderful Joe asks us to suspend disbelief

The master storyteller’s latest play opens with Joe and his dog facing ejection from their longtime home, with seemingly nowhere to go

Advance Theatre Festival is back at the Shadbolt Centre for the Arts until January 31

Ruby Slippers Theatre presents five staged readings of works by IPBOC playwrights, including Damion LeClair’s Rougarou, Carmen Aguirre’s The Consent Club, and more