From Legally Blonde to Nunsense, Metro Theatre brings the joy in 2025-26 season announcement

Roster also includes the troupe’s 40th panto, Jack and the Beanstalk, plus Neil Simon, Lend Me a Tenor, Shakespeare in Love, and more

Metro Theatre’s most recent panto, *Cinderella!*.

THE HISTORIC METRO THEATRE has just unveiled its 2025-26 season, which includes its 40th pantomime, Jack and the Beanstalk, for the holiday season. Returning December 12 to January 4, 2026, it’s been created by the team behind last year’s Ovation Award–winning Cinderella!.

The company’s theme for the season is “joy”—and the theatre has much to celebrate as it wraps this season with Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, the first large-scale musical it has staged since a rough ride through the pandemic. Metro recently refurbished its heritage lounge, and last holiday season marked its best-selling pantomime in 10 years, with Cinderella!.

The next season kicks off on an upbeat note with Ken Ludwig’s Lend Me a Tenor, the madcap, Tony Award–winning comedy about the chaos that ensues when a world-famous opera star passes out before the big show. It runs October 3 to 25.

Jane Austen fans will welcome news of the next show, Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley. Written by Lauren Gunderson and Margot Melcon, the imagined sequel to Pride and Prejudice centres around a family Christmas reunion, and runs November 7 to 29.

Kicking off the new year is Neil Simon’s Barefoot in the Park (running January 23 to February 14), the romantic comedy that took Broadway by storm in the 1960s.

It’s followed by Dan Goggin’s comedic audience favourite Nunsense, returning February 27 to March 21. Think tap-dancing nuns, a former circus performer, foul-mouthed puppets, and more.

More romantic witticisms are on offer when Metro stages Shakespeare in Love from April 3 to 25 of next year, based on the screenplay by Marc Norman and Tom Stoppard and following a young Will Shakespeare, who’s plagued by writer’s block.

Wrapping the season is the hit song-and-dance musical Legally Blonde, based on the hit movie starring Reese Witherspoon. It runs May 8 to June 7.

Find more details at the Metro Theatre website.

Featured

Janet Smith

Janet Smith is founding partner and editorial director of Stir. She is an award-winning arts journalist who has spent more than two decades immersed in Vancouver’s dance, screen, design, theatre, music, opera, and gallery scenes. She sits on the Vancouver Film Critics’ Circle.

Articles

Josh Epstein’s job is to ensure everything goes right in The Play That Goes Wrong

The Arts Club director says the smash-hit U.K. show is one of the most technically demanding comedies ever written

Theatre review: Sophie's Surprise 29th throws the season’s wildest party, mixing offbeat laughs and high-calibre acrobatics

At The Cultch’s York Theatre, wonderfully weird characterizations meet gravity-defying feats in a raucously unpretentious banger that has “hit” written all over it

Summer Arts Guide: Vancouver stage artists reveal their favourite pre- and post-show patio spots

Whether you’re looking for a quick drink and snack, conversation, reflection, or people-watching, these airy meeting places hit their marks

Antigone lands at Bard on the Beach's Douglas Campbell Theatre, starting June 30

Playwright Kate Besworth and director Ming Hudson team up for a contemporary adaptation of the classical Sophocles tragedy

Theatre scene's raucous new Rumpus Awards hope to come back in 2027

Cheeky, DIY theatre event aimed to throw light on the stage scene’s unsung heroes—and ended up selling out

Stir Q&A: Director Stephen Drover takes Macbeth into a dystopian near-future at Bard on the Beach

The veteran theatre artist grappled with big questions of good and evil, and took inspiration from genre films, for his visually stylized new adaptation

Theatre review: Come From Away captures the humanity at the heart of hit musical

Elevated visual design and a strong, multitasking cast bring ample Newfoundland warmth to new Arts Club Theatre Company and Citadel Theatre coproduction

Merry Wives of Windsor star is an old hand at bringing Sir John Falstaff to the stage

Ashley Wright has helmed it himself, but in Bard on the Beach’s new production, he plays Shakespeare’s dissolute knight under the capable direction of Rebecca Northan

Sophie’s Surprise 29th gets the party started with a few Brit circus twists

London’s Three Legged Race Productions folds in influences from contemporary circus to cabaret in a raucously funny show that celebrates a ’90s-style birthday at The York Theatre

Theatre review: Me & the Forest prefers profound pondering to straight-ahead storytelling

Boca del Lupo and ArtstageSAN’s show at the Vancouver International Children’s Festival is more of an immersive experience than a plot-driven play

Theatre reviews: Two bold shows at rEvolver Festival explore life in an increasingly synthetic world

Megan Milton’s Free Kittens and William Rubel’s Robin Redbreast in a Cage converge on close human relationships in an age of reality TV and AI

Come From Away highlights Newfoundland’s generous spirit, to August 16

The Arts Club teams up with Edmonton’s Citadel Theatre for new local production of the international smash-hit musical

Theatre review: Salt-Water Moon's casting brings compelling undercurrent of melancholy to story of first love

Two senior artists play young Newfoundland couple in Western Gold Theatre’s gentle staging

A thrilling Macbeth hits Bard on the Beach's BMO Mainstage, beginning June 11

Stephen Drover directs his own haunting adaptation of Shakespeare’s tragedy, laced with tyranny and moral corruption

Larger-than-life outdoor theatre adventure Me & The Forest comes to Granville Island, May 29 to June 14

Boca del Lupo returns to the outdoor stage in partnership with Korean puppet masters for five-metre-tall spectacle

Stir Cheat Sheet: Acrobatic officers to glowing islands, 4 shows to catch at the 2026 Vancouver International Children’s Festival

Event’s top works from across the country and the globe leap between juggling, circus, art installation, concert, and more

Bard on the Beach opens 2026 season with The Merry Wives of Windsor on the BMO Mainstage, starting June 9

Laugh-out-loud, music-filled production sets Shakespeare’s play in a fictional soccer-obsessed Vancouver suburb

Stir Q&A: The Biting School’s Aryo Khakpour on Offending the Audience

The Vancouver director says there’s something “extraordinarily intimate” about Nobel Prize laureate Peter Handke’s 1966 “anti-play”

Keith Alessi’s award-winning show draws on an inspirational true story at Western Gold Theatre, June 11 to 14

Tomatoes Tried to Kill Me But Banjos Saved My Life documents the creator’s retirement, cancer diagnosis, and pursuit of a long-deferred passion for music

Citizen Chen and FREE KITTENS make comedy personal at Upintheair Theatre’s rEvolver Festival

Sharply funny shows by standup comics Scarlet Chen and Megan Milton get theatrical about themes of immigration and mother-daughter relationships

Western Gold Theatre’s Salt-Water Moon takes a nostalgic look at lost love, May 21 to June 7

Veteran actors Craig March and Dolores Drake play the young lovers in David French’s play, set in a Newfoundland outport 100 years ago

Belgian academics tackle serious topics with comedy in La Convivialité and Kevin

Arnaud Hoedt and Jérôme Piron look at linguistic absurdity and educational inequity in their hit shows La Convivialité and Kevin

Theatre review: Think fun 1950s nostalgia as CTORA Productions stages Grease

Musical numbers consistently land with energy and flair in a production that boasts strong performances and choreography

Theatre review: Cheeky charm and energy abound in Metro Theatre's pink-powered Legally Blonde

Vancouver newcomer Celeste Nicholson heads a strong cast with enough verve to delight even those who are very familiar with the show.

Grease’s retro trip starts with its energized songs, to May 17 at the Granville Island Stage

CTORA Productions’ new version of the hit musical brings back nostalgic numbers like “Summer Nights”

The Cultch’s 2026-27 season promises Greek gods, chemical romance, and dances with puppets

Highlights include the premiere of a new musical by Amiel Gladstone and Veda Hille, the annual East Van Panto, and the return of Ronnie Burkett’s Daisy Theatre