The Shaw Festival was founded in 1962, featuring, in George Bernard Shaw, a house dramatist as prolific as Stratford's Shakespeare -- and, by his own modest estimation, better. We can disagree, but there's no denying that each was a master of language and the dominant playwright of his time.

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Though smaller in theater size, total audience and budget than Stratford and limited to a smaller slice of world drama, the Shaw still has those who claim its superiority: This year's large-format festival guide quotes a New York critic who labels it "the best repertory company on the entire continent." That goes too far, but it is surely second-best. The relative intimacy of its theaters gives it an advantage, and, as if pressing to catch up, it runs longer: It opened April 1 and runs to Nov. 27.

This year it stages 10 plays, two of them by Shaw (usually it's three), all in rotating repertory in three theaters.

You hear a lot of talk at the Shaw of "the mandate," meaning its self-imposed artistic focus. For most of the 1980-2002 artistic directorship of Christopher Newton, the mandate was to stage only plays written during Shaw's lifetime, 1856-1950 -- what it called "plays about the birth of the modern world." But in his final years Newton loosened that to allow recent works set during Shaw's century, and artistic director Jackie Maxwell, now in her third season, has loosened that further to include "plays about the people and ideas of that time."

"It's increasingly known as 'Jackie's elastic mandate,' " Maxwell admitted in a phone interview, clearly happy to have added what elasticity she has.

But the centerpiece of every Shaw season is one of his dozen or so big, popular plays, staged in the main 869-seat Festival Theatre. This year, there are two, his 1896 seaside comedy about heritage and transformation, "You Never Can Tell," and his timely 1905 comic drama of religion, morality and warfare, "Major Barbara."

The other Festival Theatre attraction is the 1959 American musical drama "Gypsy," which is set backstage in the '20s and '30s. This is the first time the Shaw has staged its season-long musical there instead of in the pretty 328-seat Royal George, which does host this year's other musical, the more Shaw-like "Happy End" by Kurt Weill and Bertolt Brecht.

Other shows at the Royal George are Somerset Maugham's edgy, even shocking 1926 comedy of manners, "The Constant Wife"; William Inge's 1955 comedy about the cowboy and the chantoosie, "Bus Stop"; and a short "lunchtime" one-act, "Something on the Side," an 1890 farce by Georges Feydeau and Maurice Desvallieres, starring Simon Bradbury, who recently played his one-man "Chaplin" for Pittsburgh Irish & Classical Theatre.

That leaves the intimate thrust stage of the 327-seat Court House Theatre, like a miniature version of Pittsburgh's Hazlett Theater. There, R.C. Sherriff's 1928 "Journey's End" takes us into the trenches of World War I. Lillian Hellman's 1951 drama of autumnal passion, "The Autumn Garden," stars a trio of the Shaw's strong women, Sharry Flett, Goldie Semple and Patricia Hamilton; and "Belle Moral: A Natural History," a new play by Canadian Ann-Marie MacDonald, is a comedy mystery set at the turn of the 20th century.

The strength of the Shaw is its acting company, built up slowly over the years, evolving slightly with each new season. The experience of mastering the word-rich theater of Shaw has served it well in tackling such contemporaries as Granville Barker, Noel Coward and now, doubtless, Maugham. Strong ensemble interplay has also given it a facility with farce, which makes this year's Feydeau a prospective delight.

Semple's season pairs "You Never Can Tell" with the Hellman. Benedict Campbell appears in both "Major Barbara" and "Happy End." There are many such interesting assignments. Familiar stalwarts in the company include Fiona Byrne, Norman Browning, Laurie Paton, David Schurmann, Mary Haney, Peter Hutt, Jim Mezon and Guy Bannerman.

Among the directors, the ever-interesting Neil Munro directs "The Constant Wife" and the Feydeau. Tadeusz Bradecki directs "Happy End," and artistic director emeritus Newton returns to direct "Journey's End." Directing "The Autumn Garden" is Martha Henry, who is also acting at Stratford.

Artistic director Maxwell herself tackles "Bus Stop" and "Gypsy." She insists "Gypsy" is appropriate for the Shaw because of the strength of its book. "[Author] Arthur Lawrence called it a musical play. I knew our company could do it, because it has lots of meaty stuff. I think it encompasses everything a musical for us should be."

But Maxwell wouldn't have chosen "Gypsy" without having a company member to play Rose. Nora McLellan, veteran of 21 Shaw seasons, has played everything from Saint Joan to Bernarda Alba. "Nora was born to play Mama Rose," Maxwell says. She has such power that she would have "just sort of busted out" the smaller Royal George: "I can imagine Nora on that stage belting out 'Everything's Coming Up Roses' and people being flattened against the back wall."

Hence the Festival Theatre. "Matching the piece to the space," Maxwell calls it. She tried a similar innovation last year, scheduling "Floyd Collins" in the Court House.

As artistic director, Maxwell is concerned that the Shaw has been in deficit in recent years, attributable to the decline in American tourism since 9/11, the Iraq War and the SARS scare in Toronto.

"The year of the locust," Maxwell calls 2003. "We took quite a hit. I can't throw everything on the world, but it didn't help. ... We don't get a lot of financial subsidy" -- less than Stratford, always a bone of contention in Niagara-on-the-Lake.

Still, "I try not to listen too hard to the great god Marketing," she says. The goal is "to maintain intellectual rigor and curiosity" in spite of financial pressure. The final two months of 2004 saw the company's strongest box office in eight years.

"We're moving out of that bottom period," she said.

Before coming to the Shaw, Maxwell ran a Toronto theater known for new plays. But she says she has taken happily to a festival based in modern classics. "Shaw, Ibsen, Chekhov and O'Casey -- I find myself in heaven!" There's also the strong acting ensemble. And "I have a real bee in my bonnet about Edwardian women writers," such as Githa Sowerby ("Rutherford and Son") and Cicely Hamilton ("Diana of Dobson's"). She values the chance to juxtapose them with more contemporary works.

Something about the restrictions of even the loosened mandate, she says, "allows our programming to go deeper. ... Put it this way: I've read more plays in the past three years than I thought was humanly possible."

Her first contract is up this October, but she's already planning future seasons.

Still, like many artistic directors, she's happiest to put down the chief's hat: "I skip merrily into rehearsal, because then I'm just in a room working on a play."

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If you go to the Shaw Festival

Essentials

Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario; 44th season, the third for artistic director Jackie Maxwell. A colorful, large-format, 68-page festival booklet, including play descriptions, schedules of performances and other events and a visitors guide to accommodation services, hotels, B&Bs, cottage rentals, restaurants, wineries, shopping and other attractions is available from the Shaw Festival, Box 774, Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario, Canada L0S 1J0; phone 1-800-511-7429; fax 1-905-468-3804; www.shawfest.com.

Tickets: Prices (from the above numbers) vary according to theater, location, day of week and play. The range is Canadian $42-$82 (U.S. $34-$66.40), with some shows discounted as low as $20 (U.S. $16.20) for students and $30 (U.S. $24.30) for seniors; lunchtime one-acts are $20 (U.S. $16.20). Preview tickets are discounted up to 40 percent; a family plan includes half-price youth tickets; those under 30 can buy some tickets for $30 (U.S. $24.30).

Accommodations: The Niagara-on-the-Lake Chamber of Commerce is in the Court House at 26 Queen St. and is open seven days a week, 10 a.m.-7:30 p.m., through Oct. 15. It publishes its own Visitor's Guide and it runs an accommodations service; 1-888-619-5981, 1-905-468-1950 or www.niagaraonthelake.com. Other such services include the Niagara-on-the-Lake B&B Association (1-905-468-0123; www.niagara-bedandbreakfasts.com); Stay Niagara-on-the-Lake (1-866-805-9188; www.stayniagaraonthelake.com); Accommodations Are Us (1-905-468-7007; www.accommodations-niagara.com); and Historic B&B (www.historicbb.com).

Schedule of plays

Festival Theatre (869 seats): Shaw, "You Never Can Tell" (through Nov. 26); Styne, Sondheim and Laurents, "Gypsy" (through Oct. 30); Shaw, "Major Barbara" (June 10-Oct. 29).

Royal George Theatre (328): Somerset Maugham, "The Constant Wife" (through Oct. 9); Weill and Brecht, "Happy End" (May 15-Oct. 28); Feydeau and Desvallieres, "Something on the Side" (June 10-Sept. 25); William Inge, "Bus Stop" (June 28-Nov. 27).

Court House Theatre (327): R.C. Sherriff, "Journey's End" (May 13-Oct. 8); Lilliam Hellman, "The Autumn Garden" (June 11-Oct. 8); Anne-Marie MacDonald, "Belle Moral: A Natural History" (July 7-Oct. 7).

Reading Series: Shaw one-act, TBA (July 22); Dorothy Parker, "A Certain Lady" (Aug. 12); Paul Sportelli and Jay Turvey, "Tristan," a musical (Aug. 21 and Sept. 1); Evelyn Waugh, "The Loved One" (Sept. 2).

Workshops: seven topics, from Acting the Text to Making Hats, each from one to five days.

Tour from Pittsburgh: The Post-Gazette sponsors a theater tour to both the Stratford Festival (four plays) and Shaw Festival (three plays), June 21-25. A Shaw Festival trip alone, Sept. 6-9, includes six plays. Call 412-441-3131 for details.

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