“Swept along in a shameless sea of sentiment and schmaltz, buoyed by a smashing performance in the title role by Caroline Toal, and enjoying a contact high from the enthusiastic enjoyment of a theatre full of young children, I fell in love – reluctantly – with Anne of Green Gables…

Sarah Dodd and Tim Campbell bring the Cuthbert household to vivid life. Dodd is incisive in evoking Marilla’s flinty determination born of her hardscrabble farm life. She makes every reluctant step of her gradual warming to Anne crystal clear.

As the kinder, gentler Matthew, Campbell is wonderfully endearing, not to mention quite funny…

It looks like the Festival has another hit on its hands.”

“Nothing quite matches the magic you feel when everyone in a room – both on stage, and in the audience, basks in the knowledge that an incredibly special new piece of Art is being shared with the world.

This delightful piece of metatheatre is comedically self-aware when it comes to updates and changes it makes and to how ‘Anne’ purists might react to this…but it is also self-aware in that the heart and the soul of the story remain firmly intact…

This adaptation takes liberties when it comes to the original story – in more ways than one, updating elements of it for today’s world. It is clear that Sandler takes great care in doing this – always centering the novel, and utilizing the established metatheatrical device to literally reassure us all that even if things have changed slightly, this is still our Anne and everything will be ok.”

“This big tent love letter to the enduring power of Anne’s story and the abiding power of imagination is the Anne of Green Gables we didn’t know we needed…

Julie Lumsden is wonderful as a grounded, smart, and elegantly complicated version of Anne’s “bosom friend” Diana Barry, while Jordin Hall crafts a winningly tongue-tied, emo-athletic Gilbert. Helen Belay shines as the scheming Josie Pye, while Josue Laboucane and Jennifer Villaverde deftly handle both student and teacher roles. Steven Hao earns the show’s biggest laughs…

…this extraordinary production — so funny and moving, so kinetic and brainy and soulful — is a celebration of how stories live and grow through their readers, and a demonstration of exactly why this tale continues to matter so deeply to so many.”

“Caroline Toal is a wonderful Anne Shirley. She demonstrates all of Anne’s energy, her head-strong behaviour and her love of chatter. Sarah Dodd is a perfect Marilla, reserved and curt at first, but later able to verbalize her love of Anne. As Matthew, Tim Campbell shows us a shy and awkward man who soon comes into his own, sharing Anne’s joys. Maev Beaty is the perfect Mrs. Lynde, gossiping and rudely commenting about Anne, but later defending her. The rest of the cast is wonderful portraying the Avonlea children, even the obviously male Steven Hao, who leaves the book club and dons a dress to play Jane Andrews…

The play is definitely reaching out to a new audience of Anne fans. Many little girls attended the opening, wearing their long Anne dresses with pinafores and those sweet straw hats. It doesn’t seem necessary to modernize it to get their attention.”

“…no matter if you love the book or hate it, or are totally unfamiliar with its story, Sandler’s new production is unmissable. It’s charming, tender and incredibly heartfelt, and it left me laughing in one moment and in tears by the next…

Sandler, who also directs, ensures the sweetness of Montgomery’s coming-of-age tale maintains some bite. After a surprising but well-earned twist in the second act, she does an especially fine job of guiding the play through its home stretch, with some of its most poignant scenes.

It’s here, for me, when the tears started flowing. And they didn’t stop through to the final blackout. Filled with stunning work all around, this “Anne of Green Gables” is — like its title character — a remarkable gift in every way.”

“A true-to-the-book first half hits all the right nostalgic notes, while the second half is an ‘Anne 2.0’ that better reflects the aspirations of today’s girls and the shape of modern families…

Of course, the production rests on Anne herself, and Caroline Toal makes a dazzling first impression. From the moment she collapses face-first in grief over not being the boy Marilla expected, we understand: this Anne is a live wire of feeling, and we’re going to feel it all with her.Of course, the production rests on Anne herself, and Caroline Toal makes a dazzling first impression. From the moment she collapses face-first in grief over not being the boy Marilla expected, we understand: this Anne is a live wire of feeling, and we’re going to feel it all with her…

this Anne isn’t just a retelling, it’s a renewal. It reminds us why we fell in love with the story in the first place, while also gently nudging it into the present. By stirring together traditional and modern elements, Sandler’s adaptation makes room for more readers, more viewers, and more kinds of families.”

“For perhaps the first time in the Stratford Festival’s history, the show you absolutely, categorically cannot miss this summer was not written by William Shakespeare. It’s not a musical, either, or even a restoration comedy…

Sandler’s adaptation – some of her best writing in recent years – manages to have its cake and eat it, too, with a script that welcomes children and adults alike into its care from the very first line. It’s both funny and achingly sad; straightforward yet nuanced and supple. Like Anne herself, Sandler’s treatment of her is one of gripping contradictions that stretch the imagination and satisfy the soul…

And what’s an adaptation without a spitfire Anne leading the way? Caroline Toal is that and more, spunky and sprightly as Canada’s favourite redhead, as convincing in the play’s darker moments as in its more lighthearted tales of tweenage girlhood.”

“Sandler chooses not to set this adaptation solely in the late 1800s…

Instead, Sandler seamlessly melds the past with the present, making it uniquely imaginative to watch how and when the characters transition. For instance, Maev Beaty (who plays Rachel Lynde), dressed in the appropriate era clothing, busily surveys the stage about five to seven minutes before the show begins informing ‘Stage Manager’ Josue Laboucane (who’s dressed in twenty-first-century clothing) what she intends to do. And then she does it. Beaty’s comic timing, which piques audience interest, is essential…

Under Sandler’s tender and kind direction, the performers become very real people both in the late 1800s and in 2025.”