From Renaissance England matinee to '40s New York at night: Stratford's musical feat

Director/choreographer Donna Feore photographed at the Festival Theatre in Stratford, Ont., Thursday, May 7, 2026. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Ian Stewart

STRATFORD, ONTARIO, CANADA — Donna Feore is pretty sure Stratford is the only place she could pull off the ambitious double-bill currently on offer: two very different musicals on the same stage, with mostly the same cast.

As she puts it, you could spend the afternoon in Renaissance England for “Something Rotten!” and then go for dinner and return to 1949 New York for “Guys and Dolls.”

“To have two major musicals in a repertory situation on that huge stage, it’s crazy.”

Stratford being a repertory theatre — that is, a theatre with a resident company of actors who put on a variety of productions — is a big reason this is possible.

But it’s still highly unusual.

“We do two musicals all the time, usually one here (at the Festival Theatre) and one at the Avon (Theatre), and I’ve done that, two shows before in a season, early openers,” Feore said. “But it’s different. And we often don’t share exactly the same cast.

Each of “Something Rotten’s” 33 actors is also in the 38-member “Guys and Dolls” cast, while 14 people on the creative team — not including Feore — work on both productions, from the set and lighting designers to the assistant choreographer.

As well, half of the 12-member band for “Something Rotten” is part of the 21-person orchestra for “Guys and Dolls.”

“It’s crazy because you’re flipping shows all the time,” said Feore. “We do get confused. Occasionally we come in and say, ‘What are we--? Oh that’s right, that’s what we’re doing today.’”

But Feore said she wanted to go all out, in part because it’s artistic director Antoni Cimolino’s last season at the festival’s helm.

“To be the first person to mount two shows on this stage is exciting — and it’s important to me to offer our audiences such different experiences in this magnificent space,” said Feore, whose decades as a director and choreographer with Stratford date back to 1990, when she was a featured dancer in “Guys and Dolls.”

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She was methodical in preparing her team for the task, using skills honed over decades as a director and choreographer.

“I definitely get the big numbers done early in the process so that the dancers all get a chance to train,” she said. “We start with that and then I move into the scene work pretty quickly. But the process is just volume, I think, more than anything else.”

It helps that Feore directed “Something Rotten” at Stratford just two years ago, with much of the same cast. There are some small tweaks to the production — “I like to call it ‘Extra Rotten,’” she quips — but it’s largely unchanged.

The show follows two down-on-their-luck playwrights in Renaissance England who are trying to eke out a living in a world that only wants to see Shakespeare’s work.

With the help of a farsighted fortune teller, they stumble upon the concept of a musical and decide to write the very first one. The result is a send-up of both the Bard and flashy Broadway shows, with references that range from “Macbeth” to “Les Misérables.”

It’s also Feore’s second time directing “Guys and Dolls” at the festival, though it’s been nearly a decade.

“I’ve changed in the last nine, 10 years,” said Feore.

“I’ve learned a few more things about the space and I’m seeing the material in a slightly different way and of course through a modern lens of this world right now.”

Feore uses “Guys and Dolls” to explore ideas about power and gender.

The show follows a group of gamblers in New York City trying to secure a location for a craps game, while a police officer circles and a mission organization tries to show them the light.

For this production, Feore maintained changes she made in 2017 to a scene in which the sheltered missionary Sarah Brown goes on a date to Havana, Cuba, with high-stakes gambler Sky Masterson.

In the original script, Masterson secretly plies Brown with alcohol. In Feore’s version, the decision to loosen up is Brown’s own. She retains her agency and the meaning of the scene shifts.

This time around, she’s taken it a step further, casting women in roles typically played by men — Lt. Brannigan, a police officer hell-bent on catching the gamblers, and Gen. Cartwright, the head of the Save-a-Soul Mission.

Olivia Sinclair-Brisbane, who plays Sarah Brown in “Guys and Dolls” and Portia in “Something Rotten,” said Feore brings a fresh perspective to both productions.

“It’s really important for a director to have a reason why — to say this is what we’re saying with the story, this is the main piece of our story,” she said on a video call from Stratford.

By doing that, she said, Feore helps the actors differentiate the two productions.

“Donna especially is really good at creating these separate worlds,” she said. “Donna is amazing at having this vocabulary. It’s like she picks a way of speaking about the era.”

Still, Sinclair-Brisbane said, it hasn’t been easy: “For both Sarah and Portia, there are large vocal demands.”

To manage, she uses vocal warm-ups and cool downs, combined with rest — sometimes not speaking for the entirety of her day off — and plenty of fluids.

Otherwise, her vocal chords swell and calluses form.

“The back of my throat gets slightly hot,” she said. “It feels tight as if the air passage is getting smaller and smaller, but it also starts to feel extremely dry ... like no matter how much water you drink, nothing is hydrating back there.”

Her two characters sing differently, which is also a workout for her vocal chords, particularly on the days they perform both shows.

At least 35 times this year — depending on whether the shows get extended, as Stratford’s musicals often are — the cast will have to perform both two-and-a-half-hour shows in a single day: one at 2 p.m., the next at 8 p.m.

“The ensemble members, the people dancing on stage, they blow my mind every night,” Sinclair-Brisbane said. “Especially on a day where we do two shows, I have no idea how they’re still standing by the end of the second show.”

Dan Chameroy plays the charming gambler Sky Masterson — all good posture and smooth movements — and Thomas Nostradamus, a hunched-over, herky-jerky soothsayer.

He’s in the gym six days a week to ensure his body can handle the toll.

“I’m training harder than I have over the last couple of years because I know what the demands are,” he said.

“And now that I’m doing both shows, because they both are in my body, it’s easier for me to flip back and forth,” he said.

Chameroy, who’s been at Stratford for 18 seasons, said he knows five hours of musical theatre is a big ask for audiences, but he hopes people go for it anyway.

There’s only been a single doubleheader day so far, but the festival’s two-for-one ticket deal on Tuesdays and Thursdays cuts the price in half 16 times this season.

“Seeing the two shows at the festival, I think it’s a real treat,” he said. “And it’s a treat for us as actors to be able to do it. So I hope that whoever makes it out this season enjoys themselves as much as we are.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 22, 2026.

Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press