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!.

Metro Theatre. Photo by Chelsey Stuyt

 
 

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.

 
 
 
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Janet Smith
Janet Smith

Janet Smith is cofounder 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.

 
 

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THEATREJanet SmithMetro Theatre, musicals