We may have all been disappoint in Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit trilogy… but that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy it somewhere else!
The Stratford Festival has brought J.R.R. Tolkien’s adventure to the stage this summer, with The Hobbit now playing in repertory at Stratford, Ontario’s Avon Theatre through October 25, 2026. Directed by Pablo Felices-Luna and adapted by Kim Selody, the production is part of the Festival’s Schulich Children’s Plays series — and it features some inventive practical stagecraft in this year’s season.
Richard Lee plays Bilbo Baggins, with Tim Campbell as Gandalf, Michael Man as Gollum, and Sara-Jeanne Hosie doubling as Old Took and Narrator.
Tolkien and the Stage Problem
First published in 1937, The Hobbit was Tolkien’s entry point into Middle-earth — a tale written for his children, before the mythology deepened The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien himself was famously skeptical of theatrical adaptations of his work. His prose was built for the page: the songs, the careful accumulation of atmosphere, the internal monologue of a homebody hobbit discovering reserves of courage he never knew he had.
The practical challenges alone are formidable. A company of thirteen dwarves, an ancient dragon, trolls, goblins, giant spiders, and a battle between five armies — all to be rendered by a handful of actors on a single stage. How a production solves that problem is where it lives or dies.
The Avon Theatre, Stratford, Ontario — home of the Stratford Festival’s 2026 production of The Hobbit. Photo: Chris Woodrich / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Inventive Stagecraft
Felices-Luna and his design team solve the practical problems. Set designer Lorenzo Savoini has built three concentric truncated stone semi-circles that shift and reconfigure throughout the evening, their surfaces transformed by Michael Walton’s dynamic lighting to evoke the Shire, mountain passes, goblin caverns, and the depths of the Lonely Mountain — all without a single digital projection. The effect is that of watching landscapes conjured from pure craft.
The puppetry is the production’s crown jewel. Towering troll puppets, a swooping eagle, giant spiders conjured through silhouette and webs — and most memorably, Smaug himself, brought to terrifying life by three puppeteers working in concert inside Ting-Huan Christine Urquhart’s red-lit dragon costume. SesayArts reported the dragon drew gasps and spontaneous applause.
SesayArts put it well: those who arrive already loving Middle-earth will find much here to cherish — they can fill in the gaps from memory. But the production’s ceiling is set by its source script, and no amount of spectacular staging fully compensates for text that doesn’t go as deep as Tolkien did.
The Hobbit runs at the Avon Theatre, Stratford, Ontario through October 25, 2026. Tickets and scheduling are available at stratfordfestival.ca.
