The best things at the Shaw Festival seem to, at least for me, always come as a surprise. So I’m shocked but not shocked to tell you that, in 2025, the Shaw show I can’t stop thinking about is Tons of Money. The farce. Of all things.

I hate farce but I love Mike Nadajewski (I know that sounds contradictory but he doesn’t just do farce despite being Canada’s top man for it), I trust director Eda Holmes whose sense of space and timing has never steered me wrong, and I was intrigued by the co-lead casting of Julia Course. Quite a serious actress known for a straight face and nuanced delivery, I’d seen Course do comedy (brilliantly, she’s always brilliant) but I’d never seen her do wild comedy. Hyper-physical wackiness seemed like an odd choice for her gravitas and poise but the thing that’s always been the most remarkable about Course as a performer is not how good she is at what she does but how well she does pretty much anything. Remember the season when she played Jimmy Stanton in Mae West’s scandalous Sex and the tender and vulnerable Laura Wingfield in rep? Holy moly. To assume Julia Course is casting that won’t work is to not know what you’re talking about. So I saw Tons of Money, even though, again, I really truly do hate farce.

By god it was fun. Will Evans & Valentine’s script is snappy, bright, and full of enough dramatic irony and actual plot mechanics that the production is far less reliant on people falling down than the genre’s usual antics. Holmes’ production is very physical and dynamic but not without the laws of physics. Her people are people, never cartoons, no matter the material. Nadajewski and Course make a great team with delicious chemistry like a madcap Mackers and Lady M, grounding the action in their very real relationship even as their plans spin further and further out of orbit. Real-life couple Graeme Somerville and Marla McLean show off their own chemistry in a sexy subplot as scheming servants, summoning all the heat that’s notably absent from Dear Liar.

True to Shaw form, my favourite thing of the season was the last thing I expected it to be. It’s one of the great joys of the Shaw, that sense of discovery, and a fun way to remind me not to skip a single thing.