The 2010 season was announced on Aug. 26 by artistic director Des McAnuff. Four plays by Shakespeare are on the 12-title slate.

Tony winner Carver (Kiss of the Spider Woman) will star in the revue Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris, at the Tom Patterson Theatre, directed by Canadian director Stafford Arima (Altar Boyz, London's Ragtime). Carver will also play Jaques in a McAnuff-directed As You Like It at the Festival Theatre, the flagship house of the four-venue festival in Stratford, Ontario.

A production of Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate, inspired by The Taming of the Shrew, will be directed by Tony Award winner John Doyle (Broadway's recent A Catered Affair, Company, Sweeney Todd) at the Festival Theatre.

Plummer, who began his career at Stratford, was hailed for his performance as Julius Caesar in the 2008 Festival production of Bernard Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, directed by McAnuff, and this week received a Gemini nomination for his performance in the film of that production. In 1997 Plummer won a Tony Award (his second) for Barrymore, a production that originated at Stratford. Among his honors are another seven Tony nominations, two Emmy Awards and six nominations, a Genie Award and four nominations.

Marti Maraden will return to the Festival to direct Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale at the Tom Patterson Theatre. The fourth Shakespeare, The Two Gentlemen of Verona, will be directed by Dean Gabourie, the Festival's assistant artistic director. It will be the first Shakespeare ever to be mounted at the intimate Studio Theatre. Christopher Hampton's Dangerous Liaisons, directed by Ethan McSweeny, will be the fourth production featured at the Festival Theatre.

Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice's Evita (directed by Gary Griffin, who staged Broadway's The Color Purple and the current Stratford West Side Story) and the non-musical version of J.M. Barrie's play Peter Pan (directed by Tim Carroll) will appear at the proscenium Avon Theatre.

The Festival will continue its commitment to Canadian plays in 2010. The Studio Theatre will present the world premiere of George F. Walker's epic play King of Thieves, the first of the Festival's recent commissions to reach the stage. "This play with songs moves the setting of John Gay's Beggar's Opera from London to New York City in the late 1920s, in a tale of corruption at all levels of society that leads to the collapse of the financial system," according to Stratford. Jennifer Tarver will direct.

Canadian Michel Tremblay's For the Pleasure of Seeing Her Again, directed by Chris Abraham, will be presented at the Tom Patterson Theatre.

Geraint Wyn Davies will present his one-man show Do Not Go Gentle, by Leon Pownall, about the life of Dylan Thomas. Directed by Dean Gabourie, the production will be staged at the Studio Theatre, where Wyn Davies presented three evening performances of the show in 2002. Wyn Davies and Gabourie will also mount Do Not Go Gentle in New York City this winter.

Works by Judith Thompson and John Mighton remain under commission for future seasons, and another commission is soon to be announced.

For more information visit stratfordfestival.ca.