One set of actors prepare to take on two shows during Stratford Festival’s 2026 season

Some patrons at Stratford Festival will get to see how the same actors take on two very different shows. CTV’s Jeff Pickel reports.

Stratford Festival is trying something new.

For the 2026 season Guys and Dolls and Something Rotten! will appear on the Festival Theatre stage. The same actors and crew members will be used in both productions, but the costumes and set designs will differ.

“We are doing a unique and one-of-a-kind experience, probably in the world,” Donna Feore, the creative director behind both shows, said.

Feore said they will be tasked with presenting two very different musical theatre experiences, often on the same day.

“You will see an actor do one role that’s a Renaissance show set in Shakespeare times, and then after dinner come back and see Guys and Dolls, which is 1940’s New York City and you will get a completely different kind of style of show,” Feore said.

Both shows have graced Stratford stages in the past decade: Guys and Dolls was last staged in 2017, while audiences flocked to Something Rotten! In 2024. Something Rotten! proved to be so popular, its run was extended into November.

“When you’ve done something and it was a success, you’re wondering, ‘Will lightning strike twice?’” Dan Chameroy, who is reprising his role as Nostradamus in Something Rotten! and will portray one of the male leads, Sky Masterson, in Guys and Dolls, said.

“The goal is to come back to Something Rotten! and do something different and add to it,” he said.

Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane will return as Portia in Something Rotten! and will star as one of the female leads, Sarah Brown, in Guys and Dolls.

“It’s really thrilling to get to redo a project so soon because you feel like you already know it. It’s already in your body, but now you get to make it even better than it was,” Sinclair-Brisbane said.

She said contrary to what might be logical, doing two different plays in the same day can actually be easier than doing the same production twice.

“When you’re doing the same show twice in one day, that’s when you start to get confused because you hear the music, you’re like, ‘Wait. Did I already do this? No that was this morning when we did the early show.’ So, it’s a lot easier to do two different shows in one day than the same show,” Sinclair-Brisbane said.

The first live performance of Guys and Dolls will be on April 21. Something Rotten! hits the stage on May 11.