Stephen Sondheim, Charles Dickens, and a few new local shows highlight the Gateway Theatre's just-announced 2017-18 season.

The Richmond stage kicks off with Patrick Street Productions' classic A Little Night Music, with music and lyrics by Sondheim (including his famous song "Send in the Clowns"), from October 12 to 17.

Next up, cabaret singer-performer Beverley Elliott returns to the Gateway with her new Sink or Swim in November; the actor is known for her role as Granny on the TV series Once Upon a Time. Bill Costin returns to accompany Beverley on piano.

In December, the theatre mounts A Christmas Carol, directed by Rachel Peake and adapted by Michael Shamata.

Come the new year, David French's Salt-Water Moon comes to town in a Factory Theatre Production touring with Why Not Theatre; it was a soldout hit in Toronto last season.

Rounding out the season are Catherine Léger's I Lost My Husband, in a new Ruby Slippers production translated by Leanna Brodie in March; and Gateway artistic director Jovanni Sy's new play Nine Dragons, directed by Craig Hall in a coproduction with Vertigo Theatre and Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre in April. The latter is a crime drama set in Kowloon in 1924.