Marla McLean as Lady Windermere in Lady Windermere’s Fan.David Cooper
The Shaw Festival broke box-office records this year – with revenues from ticket sales topping $16-million, the highest haul in its history.
On Wednesday, the repertory theatre in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont., reported an overall attendance of 270,570 for the 10 shows in its 2013 season.
That's a jump of 10 per cent from 2012 – and just a little under what the festival's bigger 50th anniversary season attracted the year before that.
Two of the productions in the Festival's largest theatre – Guys and Dolls and director Peter Hinton's visionary rethinking of Lady Windermere's Fan – accounted for more than half the tickets sold according to executive director Elaine Calder, while the production of Tom Stoppard's Arcadia in the smallest theatre sold out before it opened. "This was one of those successful seasons where the full range of our productions proved popular with audiences," Calder said in a release.
The full financial picture of the festival will emerge on Jan. 31, when the Shaw Festival holds its annual general meeting.
J. Kelly Nestruck