The season opens with Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya, to be directed by Geoffrey Borny (April 28-May 14). The 1897 Russian play is a story of romance and unrequited love in which a retired professor and his beautiful young wife visit his country estate. In a director's statement, Borny said he intended to highlight the "human, cautiously optimistic view of life" he believed Chekhov had rather than the fatalistic gloom often attributed to him and the importance the playwright placed in caring for the environment.

The second show of the season is Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution (June 6-July 2), to be directed by Aarne Neeme. In his director's statement, Neeme said it was "a courtroom drama with not one but three surprise twists at the end" that had begun as a short story and been adapted into a play, a movie and a telemovie.

Next up is a play that in theatres is referred to only as "the Scottish play" to avoid bad luck. Macbeth (August 4-20) follows on from William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night in 2014 and Much Ado About Nothing in 2015 but unlike these comedies it's a dark and tragic tale. Director Jordan Best – who recently directed The Crucible and Steel Magnolias for Rep – said: "It is a story about ambition and what you'll do for ambition. For me as a woman who believes strongly in giving great roles to women, Lady Macbeth has got to be one of the greatest roles ever written."

On a lighter note is Oliver Goldsmith's 1773 She Stoops to Conquer (September 22-October 8), It is, director Tony Turner says, "the play that saved English comedy from oblivion. Before She Stoops there was an awful thing called Sentimental Comedy that was weak and had little laughter."

Goldsmith, he says, wrote his play at the behest of Samuel Johnson and began the genre of Laughing Comedy – "the beginnings of situation comedy" – with a story of class, courtship and mistaken identity.

Turner said: "Since 1773 it's been constantly performed by professional and non-professional companies."

More comedy comes in Michael Frayn's farce Noises Off (November 17-December 3), offering on and offstage views at different points during the production of a farce called Nothing On. In his director's statement Ed Wightman – whose previous Rep credits include The Book of Everything and Twelfth Night – said" "I adore the play in no small part because it sends up the world of theatre and I can personally relate to so many of the situations. But Frayn's genius is in transcending the immediate world of the play and creating a comedy that is universal appeal, by depicting a group of people desperately trying to maintain order and control against impossible odds."

And finally, Best returns in 2017 to direct Frederick Knott's thriller Wait Until Dark (February 23-March 11). "There's quite a lot of blood for me next year," she said. In the play, a young blind woman is terrorised by three men after something she has. She must figure out what is happening and use her wits – and her lack of sight – to her advantage.

Rep president David Bennett said the season was assembled with an eye to being commercially as well as artistically successful. All the plays in the season had been presented by the company before, between 1974 and 2007.

He said that the company's policy in recent years of extending the season into the following year enabled the company to begin preparations for its opening production of the following year before Christmas rather than having to rush after the season was announced.

Bennett said next year he also hoped to see a revival of Rep's Studio program of readings and small-scale mountings of other works including a couple of lesser-known Chekhov works.

For more information on Canberra Repertory Society and its 2016-17 season visit canberrarep.org.au.