Stage Door News

Toronto: Canadian Stage announces cast for sci-fi drama “Solaris”

Tuesday, December 7, 2021

Following their 21.22 season announcement made earlier this fall, Canadian Stage is thrilled to unveil a luminous cast for their season opener, David Grieg’s SOLARIS. The North American premiere of this acclaimed play is set to light up the Bluma Appel stage January 25th – February 5th in a spectacular return to the company’s largest venue.

The first live in-theatre presentation from the company since March of 2020, this big-stage production of Greig’s acclaimed adaptation will feature Sarah Afful, Daren Herbert, Tom McCamus, Irene Poole, and Anand Rajaram, and is directed by Canadian Stage Artistic Director Brendan Healy.

“I am incredibly honoured to collaborate with this gifted group of artists,” comments Healy. “SOLARIS presents an opportunity to make a large scale, visually breathtaking production, while also exploring some intimate and fundamental questions about consciousness, our hunger for contact, and the limits of the rational mind. The caliber of performers coming together for this show will bring both the power and intimacy necessary to bring this story to its fullest life. I’m thrilled that they are joining me on this journey.”

An ambitiously scaled sci-fi mystery adapted from the timeless 1961 novel by Stanisław Lem, SOLARIS is an exhilaratingly theatrical examination of love, loneliness, and our fascination with the unknown. The story of a sentient planet that works both miracles and terrors on the minds of a crew of cosmonauts has long held fascination for visual storytellers, having previously been adapted for the screen by both Andrei Tarkovsky in 1972 and Steven Soderberg in 2002.

David Greig, who adapted SOLARIS, is the current Artistic Director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh, Scotland and is widely considered one of the best living playwrights in the UK. Greig has written twenty-four original plays and twelve adaptations, including The Strange Undoing of Prudencia Hart (2011), The Events (2013) and The Cosmonaut’s Last Message To The Woman He Once Loved (1999) which Canadian Stage produced in 2011.

SOLARIS had its world premiere in June of 2019 at the Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne, Australia, before transferring to The Royal Lyceum in September. The production was a critical and box-office hit, with critics calling it the “best take yet” on Lem’s story, “breathtaking,” “haunting,” “thrilling,” and “a triumph”.

Joining Healy backstage for this North American premiere production, are assistant director Alison Wong, set designer Lorenzo Savoini, costume designer Ming Wong, lighting designer Kimberly Purtell, composer/sound designer Thomas Ryder Payne, and video designer Laura Warren.

Tickets for SOLARIS begin at $29 and single tickets are now available at www.canadianstage.com. This production runs from January 25th – February 5th, 2022, with performances at 8:00pm Tuesday – Saturday, and 2:00pm matinees on Saturday and Sunday.

Illustration: Cover of 1st edition of Solaris. © 1961 MON.