{"id":38880,"date":"2026-09-10T13:47:49","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T17:47:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=38880"},"modified":"2026-09-10T13:47:58","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T17:47:58","slug":"theatre-aurora-offers-season-of-classics-whodunnit-and-humour-in-new-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/theatre-aurora-offers-season-of-classics-whodunnit-and-humour-in-new-season\/","title":{"rendered":"Theatre Aurora offers season of classics, whodunnit, and humour in new season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Theatre Aurora opens its 2026-2027 season with a musical revue, Yesterday Once More, celebrating the hits of the 1960s and 70s, on September 18 \u2013 but laughs, larceny, and \u2018liza Doolittle will be hallmarks of the fall and winter ahead.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following Yesterday Once More, the Theatre Aurora stage will come to life again from November 13 to 21 with Over the River and Through the Woods, a Play by Joe DiPietro.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSunday dinner was never this complicated,\u201d says Theatre Aurora of the show. \u201cWhen a younger man announces he\u2019s leaving for a job across the country, his four Italian-American grandparents pull out every stop \u2013 and every guilt trip \u2013 to make him stay. Joe DiPietro\u2019s warm and wonderfully funny comedy is a love letter to family \u2013 the kind that drives you absolutely crazy and wouldn\u2019t have it any other way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Theatre Aurora Artistic Director Judi Cragg says the play was brought to the attention of her and Theatre Aurora President Neill Kernohan by Theatre Aurora veteran Kay Valentine, who previously directed the show.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBoth Neill and I loved it,\u201d says Cragg. \u201cI hate to use the word \u2018sweet,\u2019 but it\u2019s the best word I can think of, but let\u2019s just say the sweetness is tempered. Anybody who reads it, that\u2019s the word they use, and it\u2019s very, very funny. I think it\u2019s a play that many people can relate to in several different ways, and I think that\u2019s what drew us to it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My Fair Lady, the next production, which runs January 22 to 31, has been a long-time draw for the creatives at Theatre Aurora, who are thrilled to be able to finally mount the classic Lerner & Lowe musical, based on George Bernard Shaw\u2019s Pygmalion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cOne of the greatest musicals ever written, My Fair Lady sweeps you into Edwardian London where a sharp-tongued professor wagers he can transform a Cockney flower girl into a polished society lady,\u201d says Theatre Aurora. \u201cLerner and Loewe’s score is glorious \u2014 I Could Have Danced All Night<\/em>, Get Me to the Church on Time<\/em>, On the Street Where You Live<\/em> \u2014 and the story still crackles with wit, class, and complicated hearts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve always loved the show,\u201d says Kernohan, who also takes the role of Director in this production. \u201cI love the music and I also love the story. I always find the journeys of people in the shows interesting, especially for Eliza. We\u2019ve seen Eliza in some of the shows have had Eliza coming back to Higgins and I don’t want to give too much away and what we’re doing, but I don’t think we’re going to do it that way. It’s slightly different. There\u2019s always a concern that Eliza basically comes back to somebody who she shouldn\u2019t be with, she doesn\u2019t become her own person, and, to me, it\u2019s really important that she realizes who she is and who she could be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt will still be the story of My Fair Lady, and we’re going to tell it well and beautifully, but I just want to make sure that Eliza’s a little more front and centre than sometimes she’s been given in other productions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Familiar characters will be placed in unfamiliar settings when Theatre Aurora mounts the play Holmes\/Poirot March 5 \u2013 13.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Written by Jeffery Hatcher and Steve Hendrickson, the play follows \u201cthe world\u2019s greatest detective\u2026 and the other world\u2019s greatest detective.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhen Sherlock Holmes and Hercule Poirot find themselves entangled in the same baffling mystery, the game is most decidedly afoot twice over. Two brilliant minds, two infallible methods, and absolutely no agreement on how to solve the case. Holmes\/Poirot is a wickedly clever theatrical treat that plays fair with the clues, the characters, and the audience. Elementary? Hardly. But enormously satisfying.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was an unfamiliar play to the Theatre Aurora creatives when it first crossed their desks, but when the rights finally became available, they quickly snapped them up for this season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

More familiar, however, is the work of acclaimed Canadian playwright Norm Foster, whose farce Self Help, closes out the season, running April 30 through May 8.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat happens when the gurus of personal transformation have a body they desperately need to get rid of? Norm Foster’s hilarious farce takes aim at the self-help industry with sharp wit and gleeful absurdity. Packed with mistaken intentions, escalating chaos, and characters who are very much not living their best lives, Self-Help is the perfect prescription for an evening of uncontrollable laughter. No journaling required.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more information on Theatre Aurora\u2019s 2026-2027, including tickets, visit theatreaurora.com or call the box office at 905-727-3669.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Theatre Aurora opens its 2026-2027 season with a musical revue, Yesterday Once More, celebrating the hits of the 1960s and 70s, on September 18 \u2013 but laughs, larceny, and \u2018liza Doolittle will be hallmarks of the fall and winter ahead. Following Yesterday Once More, the Theatre Aurora stage will come to life again from November […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[27,4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38880","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-a76","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-09-18 23:26:02","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38880","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38880"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38880\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38881,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38880\/revisions\/38881"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38880"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38880"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38880"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}