A look as Tarragon Theatre reveals a new season: Gods and dogs and more

Photo of Hardee T. Lineham in The Ugly One, a Theatre Smash production to be presented by Tarragon Theatre in its just-announced 2013-14 season.Photo by James Heaslip

Tarragon Theatre sent out a puff of white smoke on Wednesday afternoon, as artistic director Richard Rose revealed a new season heavy on Gods and dogs.

The God That Comes – Juno winner Hawksley Workman's rock'n'roll retelling of The Bacchae – will open at the Toronto theatre in June 2014. A preview of the musical at last season's SummerWorks Festival sold out, and it has since travelled to Vancouver and Calgary.

A God in Need of Help, however, will come first, a new work by playwright-in-residence Sean Dixon set to have its world premiere in April 2014. Rose will direct this mystery, set in 1606, about "the role of faith at the dawn of the Age of Reason."

It's Daniel MacIvor's The Best Brothers, however, a comedy about two distant siblings left caring for an Italian greyhound after their mother's death, that will open the Tarragon season in September. Director Dean Gabourie's production will reunite the cast from the recent Stratford Shakespeare Festival's premiere of the play.

Tarragon's 2013-2014 season will also bring two indie theatre productions to a wider audience. TheatreRUN's production of The Double, an adaptation of Dostoevsky's novel of the same name, will reopen in October, while Theatre Smash's Dora-winning production of The Ugly One, a satire by Germany's Marius von Mayenburg, will be reprised in January.

In addition, there are other happy returns on Rose's playbill:

Weyni Mengesha, winner of best direction at the 2012 Toronto Theatre Critics' Awards, will return to the Tarragon to helm the Toronto premiere of British playwright Duncan Macmillan's Lungs; Adam Brazier, who wowed with his production of Assassins, will return to Stephen Sondheim with Marry Me A Little, which brings together songs from several of the American composer's musicals, including Follies, A Little Night Music and A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.

Three playwrights behind previous Tarragon hits will be back as well; Erin Shields, with a new play called Soliciting Temptation; Joan MacLeod, with The Valley; and Quebec's Evelyne de la Chenelière, with Flesh and Other Fragments of Love.

For more information, visit www.tarragontheatre.com