The Shaw Festival in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, announced 12 productions for its 1999 season April 9-Oct. 31, 1999.

The centerpiece Bernard Shaw production will be Heartbreak House, the playwright's allegory of British history in the early part of the 20th century. Polish director Tadeusz Bradecki will direct.

The Shaw Festival, which lured 321,000 paying customers to its 1998 season, is devoted to the work of Shaw and his contemporaries, often billing the programming as "plays about the beginning of the modern world." The new season was announced Nov. 4.

Returning in 1999 are 1998 hits You Can't Take It With You (on the Festival stage) and the "new" Gershwin musical, A Foggy Day, at the Royal George Theatre, based on the same material that inspired the film, "A Damsel in Distress."

Also on the slate are Daphne du Maurier's Rebecca and one-acts Waterloo (by Arthur Conan Doyle) and Village Wooing (by Shaw), all on the intimate Royal George proscenium stage; Noel Coward's Easy Virtue and Arthur Miller's All My Sons, on the Festival stage; and Shaw's Getting Married, Charles Vildrac's French comedy S.S. Tenacity, Chekhov's Uncle Vanya and Harley Granville Barker's The Madras House at the intimate thrust theatre, the Court House. Artistic director Christopher Newton will stage Easy Virtue and Rebecca. Meanwhile, the 1998 season has been extended through Nov. 29 with the additional performances of The Shop at Sly Corner, at the Royal George, through Nov. 29.

General public tickets go on sale Jan. 18. For a season brochure, call (800) 511-SHAW.

Shaw's 1999 season at a glance:

Festival Theatre
Heartbreak House
You Can't Take It With You
Easy Virtue
All My Sons

Court House Theatre
Getting Married
S.S. Tenacity
Uncle Vanya
The Madras House

Royal George Theatre
A Foggy Day
Waterloo
Village Wooing
Rebecca

-- By Kenneth Jones