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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

By Gail Johnson

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.

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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.

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