New season at Aquarius features Frozen and plenty of Canada
Disney musical, Agatha Christie mystery, comedy set in Hamilton, Gen X mashup, and play based on music of The Tragically Hip make up the 2025-2026 lineup.
Theatre Aquarius’s next season seems tailor made for the buy Canadian sentiment that is surging right now in the face of U.S. tariffs and 51st state rhetoric.
But the fact is, it’s a stroke of luck because the season has been in the works for a couple of years and had to be finalized long before any of the political and social upheaval began.
The new season, announced Thursday, features three plays from the True North, including the already announced It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken, a world premiere based around the music of iconic Canadian band The Tragically Hip that will wrap the 2025-2026 lineup.
The other two Canuck productions are Time Capsule and BOOM X.
The season will also include the blockbuster Disney Frozen: The Broadway Musical, which is expected to be a big seller over the holidays, and a readapted version of Murder on the Orient Express.
There are a couple of departures from tradition for this upcoming year. Tuesday evening shows are being replaced by Thursday matinees and the season is five productions rather than six. It will start in October.
“We're really finding that audiences weren't coming back to the theatre in September,” says Theatre Aquarius artistic director Mary Francis Moore. “Climate change means it’s warmer, and festivals are extending and summer theatres are still on. So we decided to push the season back.”
Moore says the setting of a season begins with threads established years in advance.
Moore is a force in and supporter of Canadian theatre. In fact, her first two seasons at Aquarius were all-Canadian seasons. A yet-to-be-announced studio series for the next season will feature all Canadian music and storytelling, too.
“I feel like there's also an appetite now for that that wasn't here even three years ago,” says Moore. She also emphasizes that beyond presenting Canadian stories and employing local creatives, the theatre supports the Hamilton economy through providing jobs, bringing audiences to restaurants, and buying supplies.
“All of our sets are built in Hamilton. The lumber is bought in Hamilton, so is the fabric for costumes. We don’t outsource. We can tell our stories a lot better about what we are to the local economy.”
Building a season is a balance of pushing the boundaries of theatre and providing the big shows that audiences are drawn to and will easily sell out. There is the artistic mandate and the revenue realities.
“I do think as much as people want recognizable titles and they want familiarity, they're also not coming to be spoon fed. You have to keep also offering shows that make you think. I think you can laugh and think or you can cry and think,” says Moore.
“And one of the things we always say is that you don't love every movie you see, you don't love every book you read, and you might not love every show you see, but it will always be artistically excellent. It will always be the highest standard and have the most talent.”
The timelines of building a theatrical season are long and uncertain. Moore has already programmed one show and is working on another for two years down the road.
“You do have to think that far in advance, especially if you're thinking about the development of it, or you're allocating funds for the development of it, or you're applying for the funds or fundraising for it, you know?”
It took Moore well over a year to secure the rights to Frozen becauseit hasn’t yet played in Toronto or Buffalo. So Moore had to have a contingency in place if that effort failed.
Sometimes Moore falls in love with projects but has to be patient to see them come to her stage. Other times, the stars align and things just fall into place.
“So some of (the plays) feel like they've been with me for years, and then for other ones, the timing is just right.”
In some cases, she has to consider whether a nearby theatre is vying for the same production and that could lead to a collaboration, such as the one with The Grand Theatre on Waitress, which opens April 30.
“I think one of the strengths coming out of COVID is theatres just want each other to survive. So there's a lot more communication about what we're doing and how do we work together.”
The season’s first show Time Capsule is a new play by Matt Murray, who wrote Maggie, which debuted at Aquarius to great reviews in 2023.
The comedic play debuted at the Blythe Festival two years ago and was titled Chronicles of Sarnia. It’s being reworked for a staging in Hamilton, including being set in our city.
“I thought it was fantastic, but for our stage it just needed to be expanded,” says Moore. “And I felt like it needed to be about 10 to 15 minutes longer just to live in our space.”
The play is about a teacher on the cusp of retirement who wants to create a legacy project in the form of a time capsule. She calls a community meeting but things go awry when the few people who show up get trapped in a church basement during a snow storm.
“It’s about community, it’s about legacy, it's about belonging. But because it's Matt, it's really, really funny,” says Moore, who will serve as director. She’s excited to stage a play that’s firmly rooted in Hamilton and will include plenty of references to the city’s history, culture and personalities.
Next up is Frozen, starring Hamilton-born Kayleigh Gorka as Elsa, who premiered in the role in the first Canadian company of Disney’s Frozen: The Broadway Musical at Neptune Theatre.
In a full-circle moment, Moore taught Gorka in Aquarius’s theatre school.
“She’s a local person and she’s just so fabulous, and she works all over. It’s so exciting to get her home and working here.”
Gorka has acted all over Canada and Europe, including in Anne of Green Gables at the Charlottetown Festival.
Next up after Frozen is Rick Miller’s BOOM X, which he wrote, directed and performs in.
“He’s 100 characters in 100 minutes. And he basically reflects our history back to us with music. He plays and sings the songs, he plays the characters, he does the history, and it just defies expectation,” says Moore.
BOOM X picks up at Woodstock in 1969, and takes us all the way to 1995, covering disco, the oil crisis, Watergate, the Cold War, video games, punk rock, the (second) British Invasion, and the arrival of the internet.
“I think it’s the kind of show that people will want to go out in January and February, it's that unique. It's uplifting, it's energetic, it's tongue in cheek. It's our history just reflected back to us.”
Described as “a marvellous mashup of media, verbatim theatre, jukebox musical and autobiographical confession” by the Globe and Mail, BOOM X is the second in Miller's trilogy of solo multimedia shows, which collectively span 75 years of music, culture, politics, and technology.
Miller is familiar to Aquarius audiences from his roles as Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar and Simeon in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat.
Moore will also direct Agatha Christie’s detective tale Murder on the Orient Express.
“I was really craving to do something lavish and costumed, and I haven't done a mystery since I got here. It will be something fun and different and with a 10-person cast. It’s a classic but it’s also a new adaptation.”
The announcement of It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken, which preceded an open casting call, generated a lot of media attention a couple of weeks ago. In a partnership with Thousand Islands Playhouse, it’s being produced by Canadian theatre juggernauts David Mirvish and his daughter Hannah, and Michael Rubinoff, the producer of runaway hit Come From Away.
Rubinoff is co-chair of the National Centre for New Musicals based at Theatre Aquarius and approached Moore with the concept.
“He came to me with the idea, more than a year ago, just saying that this was sort of floating about, and he was putting the team together. And I said to him, ‘Well, you know, if you need a theatre…’”
A workshop for the production was held at Theatre Aquarius last fall and from that, partners fell into place.
The production, written by Brian Hill and Ahmed Moneka, has the blessing of The Tragically Hip but it’s not about the band. Rather, it centres around a group of people who meet in Toronto’s Kensington Market, a landing place for many newcomers to Canada.
Moore is proud of what’s being accomplished at Theatre Aquarius in terms of debuting and supporting new Canadian works and building relationships with other theatres and producers.
“I think we're getting response to what we’re doing here and people trust us to work with us, like the Mirvishes and Thousand Islands and Michael (Rubinoff) and Jake Gold, the Hip’s agent. They saw how well A Beautiful Scar was received by this community. The community came out and supported Maggie, and Pollyanna, and all the world premieres we've done. The communities has showed up.”
The 2025-2026 season
The Time Capsule by Matt Murray
Oct. 1 to Oct. 18
The Theatre Aquarius Production of Disney's Frozen: The Broadway Musical
Nov. 19 to Dec. 21
BOOM X by Rick Miller
Jan. 21 to Feb. 7
Agatha Christie’s Murder On The Orient Express
Adapted for the stage by Ken Ludwig
March 4- 21, 2026
It's a Good Life if You Don’t Weaken
Songs by The Tragically Hip and book by Brian Hill and Ahmed MonekaApril 22 to May 16, 2026
