Founded in 1962 in Niagara-on-the-Lake, the Shaw Festival was run for years by cultured gentlemen with Anglo names directly out of P.G. Wodehouse—names like Paxton Whitehead and Christopher Newton. In addition to programming work by its namesake, the festival annually puts on other pieces written in or set during Shaw’s lifetime (1856–1950). Jackie Maxwell, a brash Irishwoman with a background in the scrappy alternative theatre scene, took over in 2003 and has shaken things up a bit, though not as much as you might expect. She’s kept the musicals and mysteries, but programmed fewer frothy drawing-room comedies and more sardonic or poignant works; less Noël Coward (amen to that) and more plays by female dramatists. She calls her ongoing efforts to unearth pieces by largely forgotten women writers from Shaw’s period “a spot of archaeology.”

Maxwell also adores—and often produces—some of the great American playwrights of Shaw’s time, where her predecessors largely stocked their playbills with decorous dramas from the mother country. Ironically, though, Americans haven’t been coming to the border town–based festival as much as they did under the anglophiles. And that’s been a problem, with slower ticket sales accounting for a sizable chunk of the festival’s $1.9-million deficit. “The Americans did start to come back after SARS,” she maintains. “But then we got whacked by the passport [regulations] and the [Canadian] dollar.”

Still, the festival’s company—called one of the finest acting ensembles in North America by The Cambridge Guide to Theatre—sold out a run of Shaw’s Saint Joan in Chicago last year and had most critics reaching for superlatives. “It was very gratifying…it was like being queens for a day,” Maxwell exults. “People are rediscovering Shaw. I’m reading all these articles in The Guardian in England that are saying, ‘My goodness, [G. Bernard] Shaw really has something to say.’ And you [think], ‘Yeah, good, come on in.’”

Despite the new spotlight, the ensemble has lost some key members this year. A few of the talented players nurtured and often utilized at Shaw over the years (most notably Ben Carlson and Kelli Fox) are even showing up at Stratford this season. Plus, to twist the knife, Stratford is programming George Bernard Shaw’s Caesar and Cleopatra—with Christopher Plummer as the Roman emperor.

And so, Maxwell has something to prove this year: that she can hold her own against the other large Ontario theatre fest, with her mix of thrillers (J.B. Priestley’s An Inspector Calls) and musicals (Leonard Bernstein et al.’s Wonderful Town), of Shaw (Getting Married) and leading female playwrights (Ann-Marie MacDonald’s Belle Moral: A Natural History). In short, at least five of the Shaw’s offerings could be contenders.

Alec Scott’s picks for the best shows at the Shaw >>

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