Theatre 2025: Unauthorized Hallmark(ish) Parody Musical - Royal Cinema

After watching over 30 plays this year, our last show of 2025 is another Christmas-themed play with the unwieldy, self-explanatory title “Unauthorized Hallmark(ish) Parody Musical”. My husband Rich chose this show so I went with a bit of scepticism, since we did not enjoy some of his Yuletide picks from previous years including “The Christmas Tea” and “The Wizard of Oz” Christmas panto, which didn’t quite hold up without the influence of Ross Petty.  But I can’t resist any new musical, so off we went.

To prepare for this latest show, we front-loaded our Christmas viewing starting in late November by watching a slew of “Hallmark Christmas movies”.  These are all variations of the same plot, a small subset of the “boy-meets-girl, boy-loses-girl, boy-gets-girl-back” Rom Com trope.  In the Hallmark Christmas movies, the story obviously happens around Christmas time, the girl with a high-powered or at least white-collared job comes from the big city to a charming little town/village and falls in love with the local carpenter/contractor/fireman/cop/solider, etc. and decides to stay.  Even the same actors get recycled from movie to movie including past B-list stars like Lacey Chabert and Scott Wolf from Party of Five or soap opera stars like Hunter King (Young and Restless) and Ryan Paevey. (General Hospital).

I am happy to report that Rich finally picked a holiday winner!  Unauthorized Hallmark(ish) Parody Musical is a fun show with original songs that both advance and spoof the plot of a typical Hallmark Christmas movie. The entire cast has great singing voices and gives hilarious performances with their tongues planted firmly in their cheeks. The costumes are appropriately festive with lots of red and green and ugly Christmas sweaters.  What really stood out was the video backdrop that set the scenes, from the skyscrapers in Big City to the airplane and highway scenes traveling to and arriving at the quaintness of Small Town with its general store and snow-glistened trees.  This extensive use of video is quite apropos since the show is staged inside Royal Cinema, an Art Moderne movie house and event space built in 1939.

Introduced with an ensemble number titled “Big City”, the heroine, aptly named “Holly”, is the powerful businesswoman who lives in “Big City” working for “Big Bank” and is spearheading “Big Merger” with a Chinese bank.  When she learns that her mother Merry has heart issues and is overworked from running 12 companies in “Small Town”, Holly decides to return to her hometown to help her mother, singing “Going Home For Christmas” as she travels.  Holly turns over responsibility for Big Merger to her co-worker and quirky best friend Martha, another stereotypical role in Hallmark movies. Martha is played by the versatile Luke Witt in one of the many outlandish wigs that he dons in portraying a variety of characters including townswomen and a shady cookie contest judge.

Once in Small Town, Holly runs into her hunky high school sweetheart, Mark Hall, who is the town sheriff/Christmas Tree Farm owner/widower with a young daughter that he repeatedly forgets about.  Exaggerating the characteristics of the typical Hallmark movie male lead which emphasize emotional intelligence over book-smarts, Mark is portrayed as kind-hearted but a total idiot, to great comedic effect.  While the sexual attraction and spark is there, Holly becomes more and more aware of his lack of intelligence.  Mark explains how his wife died in the hilarious song “Ballad of Jenny” which feigns several false conclusions as to the cause of her demise (car crash, oven gas leak, etc.) before it is revealed that she died after ignoring her severe gluten allergy in order to make and consume “real Christmas cookies”.

Holly and Merry sing a duet titled “Love or Career” that cuts to the chase of the major dilemma of many Hallmark movies.  In many of these movies, the woman is made to feel guilty for prioritizing work and career over affairs of the heart.  This musical refreshingly subverts that decision with Holly deciding that instead of following her heart, she will follow her brain, which she declares with the song “I Choose Me”.

The arc of the musical which focuses on the love story between the two romantic leads is very satisfying and spoofs the tropes perfectly.  What worked less for me was the over-the-top subplot of Merry and her former best friend turned rival Cookie in a grudge match over a cookie contest that has been rigged in Cookie’s favour for years.  This satirizes the many movies that feature cookie baking contests including a “Cookie Cutter Christmas” or “A Christmas Cookie Catastrophe”.  In the musical, Cookie comes across as a sneering, Cruella de Ville lookalike with dark arched eyebrows who blackmails a crooked judge into voting for her annually. 

Cookie does get to sing a pair of great songs including the jazzy “Cookie Doesn’t Crumble” and another song where she lists a slew of different types of cookies (gingerbread, shortbread, thumbprint, etc.).  The tune and cadence of the song sounded so familiar and it took me a few minutes to realize that this was a homage to the song “Joseph’s Coat” from Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Joseph and the Technicolour Dreamcoat which has the lyrics “It was red and yellow and green and Brown and blue”.  This is just one of multiple popular musical references or Easter eggs hidden throughout the show.  At the finale of one song, Cookie climbs onto a chair with arms spread and a green light shines on her, as if she is singing the last notes in “Defying Gravity” from Wicked.  Rich also thought he noticed quick dance poses that reminded him of Bob Fosse or the musical Chicago.

In midst of the whole cookie judging scandal, Matt’s moose Bruce got loose leading to a scene in the forest with flashlights as everyone is out looking for him while singing “A Moose Is Loose”.  While the song is said to be reminiscent of a Dr. Seuss musical, the choreography reminded me of mystery musicals like Curtains where characters are creeping around in the dark.  In another scene in the forest when Holly and Mark are trying to kiss, the introduction of singing and dancing Christmas trees changed the tone of the show away from a rom com, veering it more into more of a cartoonish affair.  I would have preferred if the plot stuck to parodying the Hallmark Christmas movies, but this is a minor nit.

From generalizing “Big City” and “Small Town” to playing on every Hallmark Christmas Movie Trope and then further exaggerating or even subverting it, this musical does an excellent job of skewering what is a guilty pleasure for many people each holiday season.  We left smiling, happy and wishing that a soundtrack would be released for the delightful songs.  Hopefully this show will tour and will return each Christmas season.

Theatre 2025: Rogers v. Rogers @ Crow's Theatre

Rogers v. Rogers is a new play by acclaimed Canadian playwright Michael Healey, who is known for writing “The Drawer Boy” and “Master Plan”.  His new endeavour was commissioned by Crow’s Theatre and is based on Globe and Mail business journalist Alexandra Posadzki's 2024 book Rogers v. Rogers: The Battle for Control of Canada’s Telecom Empire.  It deals with the epic familial power struggle between the heirs of Ted Rogers’ telecommunication company Rogers Communications.  Ted began building his empire by purchasing the Toronto FM station CHFI in 1960, then continuously added cable TV, broadcasting, internet, wireless mobile, and media operations over the decades until the various entities incorporated as Rogers Communications in 1987.

Facing his mortality amid health concerns, Ted wanted to ensure that his company remained under the control of the Rogers family.  To that end, shortly before his death in 2008, he established a Control Trust that holds about 97.5% of the company’s Class A Voting shares.  The trust is overseen by an advisory committee plus a corporate trustee (Bank of Nova Scotia). Ted assigned his immediate family members including his wife Loretta and four children (Edward, Melinda, Martha and Lisa), as well as a close cousin David Robinson and a few trusted outsiders to the advisory committee.  Edward was named the Chair of the Trust which gave him the most power, and Melinda was designated the Vice-Chair.  While this group works independently from the Rogers Communications Board of Directors, it wields control over the board due to this overwhelming majority voting block.

The power struggle for control of Rogers Communications began after Joe Natale, former CEO at Telus, was brought in as CEO in 2017.  He held this position through 2021 as he helped navigate the contentious attempt to merge Rogers with Shaw Communications, a move which Canada’s Competition Board sought to block.  Wanting to become CEO himself, Edward cited dissatisfaction with Natale’s performance due to Rogers’ low share price and its customer growth lagging behind Bell and Telus, as well as Natale’s mishandling of the merger.  Edward’s push for the ouster of Natale led to the Rogers board attempting unsuccessfully to remove Edward as Chair of the Control Trust.  He countered by using that power as Chair to remove 5 dissenting board members.  All this led to court battles with Edward facing off against his sisters Melinda and Martha and his mother Loretta who challenged his authority to unilaterally fire board members without a shareholders’ meeting.  The fight played out in the press, leading to comparisons to the hit TV show Succession which was popular at the time. Ultimately, Edward won the court challenge and his victory was complete when the Shaw merger was also successful.

Michael Healey’s play Rogers v. Rogers delves into this turmoil, with actor Tom Rooney playing all the characters in a one-man tour-de-force performance.  The set consists of an office boardroom with a long table and many swivel chairs, a multi-windowed digital screen along the back wall and a digital floor that changed colours throughout the play.  The back screen provided visual context for to clarify explanations provided by the various characters.

Instead of directly focusing on the dysfunctional Rogers family, Healey opens the play with the character of Matthew Boswell, the commissioner and head of Canada’s Competition Bureau.  Using the back screens like a digital blackboard, Boswell acts as a narrator, providing background about the Competition Act of 1985 including its deficiencies and the adverse effects on consumer prices when there is a lack of competition.  He gives multiple examples where companies such as Loblaws and Dollarama create the illusion of competition by swallowing up or merging with a slew of smaller companies which are rebranded but actually all owned by one parent company.  Rooney represents Boswell as a moral, passionate, and frenetic character who throws around “F-bombs” at will.  In his initial rant, he alludes to the stressful time his team went through in trying to oppose the merger between Rogers and Shaw Communications, with more details coming out throughout the play.  Boswell’s frustrated diatribes are tempered by calming words from his wife, who Rooney transforms into via a mere sidestep and a change of tone, demeanor and posture.

By donning an apron and speaking with a European accent, Rooney next becomes the Spanish butler Ricardo, the de facto parent-figure who provided the day-to-day childcare for the Rogers children.  Through this character we learn about Ted Rogers’ difficult childhood with a father who died when he was five and an alcoholic mother who shipped him off to Upper Canada College boarding school between the age of 7-17.  Throughout these years, Ted was not allowed to go home even though he was a mere 9 blocks away from his house.  Despite these hardships and the loneliness that he endured, Ted was determined to exceed his father’s achievements, spurring his own drive and risk-taking mindset.  As a result of his ambitions and workaholic nature, Ted was not around much for his children, as noted by the butler.  He also set extremely high standards which his offspring found difficult to meet.  Edward was described as a weak, insecure and neglected child who craved his father’s approval and compensated by overeating, while Melinda was seen as the intelligent, competent child who was a natural leader, but somehow still not good enough to take over the company, perhaps owing more to her gender than anything else.

By the time we finally see Edward and Melinda as actual characters, they are young adults that have been pitted against each other by their father in competition for his approval.  Rooney flips between the pair by having Edward hold a cup of coffee which he sets down and crosses the stage to reply as Melinda.

Visual cues were used to differentiate between the various characters, especially in terms of dress and wardrobe.  Matthew Boswell’s character usually appeared jacketless, unless he was in a rapid-fire back and forth conversation with Edward, who usually wore a suit jacket with a red pocket square once he reached adulthood.  Edward’s wife Suzanne wore large gold, dangling earrings and at one point when Edward and Suzanne had a conversation with each other, Rooney would sport the earring on only one ear and would turn from side to side to represent each character.

We continue to learn more about Edward through stories told by others. In one scene, an American telcom executive, wearing a cowboy hat and speaking with a southern drawl, describes a meeting that he had with Ted who wanted to take over his company. Ted brought Edward along and there was a strange incident with Edward trying not to eat all the pie slices on the table.  The interaction highlighted Ted’s ruthlessness and Edward’s insecurities.

In a hilarious scene where he is seated at the end of the table, Rooney portrays both Edward and a senior exec that he is trying to woo as he seeks allies to support his bid for CEO of Rogers Communications.  Rooney switches between the two characters, describing conflicting points of view of the dinner that Edward organized at the Windsor Arms.  From Edward’s perspective, the dinner was a huge success and he majorly impressed the exec all night with scintillating conversation.  Interspersed with Edward’s comments are the exec’s quips where he mocked the venue (somewhere his grandma would go), thought Edward strange and uncommunicative, and the meal lasted only 45 minutes.

Boswell returns to provide more background about the events that led to showdown between the Edward, his family and the Rogers Board.  Boswell describes the Rogers CEOs that succeeded Ted Rogers after his passing, each time bypassing Edward who vied for the job.  These included Nadir Mohamed, Vodafone “rock star” Guy Laurence and finally Joe Natale.  With each additional snubbing, the resentment grew in Edward until he finally realized that as Chair of the Control Trust, he could override the board, fire Natale, install his own figurehead CEO in Tony Staffieri (the current CFO) and then run the company from his role as Trust Chair.  We learn about the infamous “butt dial” scandal where Staffieri accidentally discussed the plans for Natale’s removal, not realizing that Natale was listening in on his cell phone.

This led to the highlight of the play, which was a masterclass in staging.  The board meeting held in September 2021 to vote on firing Joe Natale was virtual due to pandemic restrictions.  To represent this in the play, the entire stage was transformed to represent the Zoom meeting with each panel of the multi-windowed digital screen inhabited by one of the board members, all played by Tom Rooney!  The images were pre-taped but it was amazing how he made each person seem distinct with different expressions, hairstyles, some wearing glasses and matriarch Loretta sporting a cigarette in her hand.

The floor of the stage contained all the buttons of a virtual meeting including volume and mute.  Rooney sat in the chair at the middle of the long table, speaking into a microphone.  He started the meeting in the role of Edward before shifting to David Peterson, Melinda, Martha and Loretta.  As each character spoke, their video feed was enlarged on the screen, simulating Zoom’s “Active Speaker View”, reflecting Rooney who was speaking live.  Humorous moments occurred when Loretta was on mute and we only saw her lips moving while the other characters were all calling for her to unmute.

Although in reality the events happened on different days, for dramatic purposes, the vote on Natale, the pushback from the board, the call for removing Edward as Chair of the Trust, and Edward’s ultimate powerplay of invoking his rights as chair, all happened in the same Zoom meeting.  Also added to the meeting for exposition purposes were other humorous, real-life events that highlighted the dysfunction within the Rogers Family.  At one heated moment, Martha started to tweeting insults hurled at Edward and the tweets appeared on screen. In another absurd moment, Edward’s wife Suzanne inexplicably popped up to highlight two embarrassing and inappropriate events.  First was the 2021 photo with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago that sparked public backlash for poor optics.  Then she streamed a video that she commissioned (actually in 2022) where Brian Cox from Succession congratulated Edward on his “real-life Succession” board victory.

The result of this fabulously chaotic meeting was surreal, mesmerizing and mind-blowing as we watched all those images of Tom Rooney interacting with each other on screen while also watching the actual actor on stage.  Kudos to Crow’s artistic director Chris Abraham for some ingenious stagecraft and for Tom Rooney who pulled it off.

Just as Matthew Boswell opened the play, he got the last word to wrap it up as well.  Although his valiant efforts to prevent the merger of Rogers and Shaw were unsuccessful, he did achieve a conciliatory victory for Canada.  There was so much public outrage over the deal that the government felt pressured to pass Boswell’s proposed changes to the Competition Act of 1985 which should result in better protection for consumers going forward.  Bill C-59 (2025) strengthened rules on mergers, greenwashing, and hidden fee (drip) pricing, while expanding market study powers.

Michael Healey has done a fantastic job in writing a play that begins by proclaiming itself part satire, part documentary, and part work of fiction. For the audience, the play was totally entertaining and laugh-out-loud funny.  Considering all the political, economical, and organizational details about monopolies, mergers, and stock voting rights that he had to convey, this work could easily come across as dull or overly complex. But by focusing on the fallibilities, ambition, and greed of Edward Rogers and contrasting it against the Don Quixotesque passion of Matthew Boswell as he fights for the rights of consumers, Healey has turned this into a human interest, Goliath v David story that was fascinating from start to finish.  It is no wonder that this show sold out its original run in record time and then sold out again despite being extended for several more weeks.  Hopefully this play is remounted in the future, so that more people can watch it.

It would be interesting to hear what members of the Rogers family or executives of Rogers Communications think about the play, since Healey pulls no punches in depicting both the corporation and Edward Rogers in a negative light. The show even ends with a not too subtle plug for Freedom Mobile as a way to lower your cell phone bills.  The message definitely hit home since during the post-show Talkback discussion about the play, several members of the audience who responded to a question prefaced their answers by expressing feelings of shame or regret for being Rogers’ customers.

Theatre 2025: The Woman in Black @ CAA Theatre

I am not a fan of horror, be it in movies or plays.  So as much as I was apprehensive about watching The Veil at Crow’s Theatre, I dreaded watching Mirvish’s production of The Woman in Black even more.  While both these plays are considered “Gothic Horrors” that use mood, atmosphere and anticipation to rachet up suspense, The Veil was more psychologically eerie while The Woman in Black leaned into the “jump-scare” moments.

Based on a 1983 Gothic Horror novel of the same name by Susan Hill, the 1987 stage play The Woman in Black was adapted by Stephen Mallatratt using the same basic premise but wrapping the story in a “play within a play” as a framing device.  Elderly solicitor Arthur Kipps has written and wants to perform a play detailing the traumatic events that he endured as a young man, as a way to exorcise his demons.  He hires an actor (unnamed and referred to as “Actor”) to help hone his performance. But it quickly becomes clear that he does not have the skills to effectively convey his tale.  Instead, it is decided that Actor will portray the young Kipps while elderly Kipps plays all the other characters in the story.  Lighting cues are used to differentiate the inner play (Kipp’s tale) vs the outer play (the interactions between old Kipp and Actor as they plan the scenes).

Young solicitor Arthur Kipps is hired to settle the estate of the deceased Mrs. Drablow. Kipps travels to the remote (and fictional) coastal village of Crythin Gifford to attend her funeral and visit her mansion, Eel Marsh House, in order to review her papers.  While there, he is met with fear and suspicion from the villagers who refuse to accompany him to the manor.  Both at the cemetery and in the house, he spots a ghostly woman dressed all in black with a ghoulish, skeletal face and hears the sounds of screams, a child crying, and a pony and cart plunging into the surrounding marsh.  Eventually Arthur learns that the ghost is the vengeful, malevolent spirit of Jennet Humfrye, the sister of Alice Drablow who had adopted the unwed Jennet’s son Nathaniel.  Going mad after watching her son and his nursemaid drown in the marsh one foggy night, Jennet now haunts the village and wreaks revenge by causing the deaths of children related to anyone who sees her.

As much as I don’t enjoy being scared for two hours, or even worse, the anticipated dread of waiting to be scared, I did admire the acting performances and especially the stagecraft used to set the mood.  For the most part, the play is a two-hander performed with a minimalist set and a rack of coats, hats, scarves and canes that transform the elderly Kipps into the various village people.  The rest is left up to the audience’s imagination, aided by vivid dialog accompanied by effects of dim lighting, shadows, smoke, fog, and sound effects including rumbling of a train, crows cawing, the clip-clopping of a horse and cart that takes Kipps to the mansion, the thudding of a rocking chair in the middle of the night, anguished neighing horses plunging into water and bloodcurdling screams emanating from the back of the theatre.  A third actor pops up throughout the play as the eponymous Woman in Black and waiting for her appearances serves as one of the main sources of tension and foreboding in this play.

The Woman in Black is the second longest running non-musical play in London’s West End, trailing only Agatha Christie’s Mousetrap.  I thought it was strange to schedule such a play at Christmas as opposed to Halloween (although there might not have been much choice given that this is a traveling production).  But Arthur Kipps first line talks about Christmas Eve, so maybe that qualifies this as a “Christmas play” after all … as much as Die Hard is a Christmas movie.

Theatre 2025: Narnia @ Soulpepper

The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe (known as LWW) is the first book in a children’s fantasy series titled “Chronicles of Narnia” written by C.S. Lewis between 1949-1956.  Set in 1940 during WWII, the story deals with the four Pevensie siblings, Peter, Susan, Edmund and Lucy (aged 13, 12, 10 and 8 respectively), who are evacuated from London to evade the German Blitz.  They are sent to live with an old professor in a Victorian manor in the English countryside.  During their stay, first Lucy, then Edmund and finally all four siblings discover a magical passage through the back of a wardrobe leading them to the mystical land of Narnia, which is full of talking animals and mythical creatures including fauns, centaurs, dwarves, giants, tree spirits and water nymphs.  Under the control of the wicked White Witch, Narnia is stuck in perpetual winter.  The children are met by Mr. and Mrs. Beaver who greet them as Sons of Adam and Daughters of Eve and reveal that the witch fears them because the four are prophesized to defeat her with the assistance of Aslan, a great and powerful lion who is returning after a long absence.

On Lucy’s first visit to Narnia, she meets a faun, Mr. Tumnus, who is supposed to turn her over to the witch.  Instead, he shows her the way back home and is punished by being turned to stone.  When Edmund first finds Narnia, he encounters the witch and is initially lured into helping her with promises of power and the addictive magical treat “Turkish Delight”.  This makes him a traitor against his family and by invoking ancient laws of “Deep Magic”, the witch claims the right to kill all traitors.  Aslan offers to take the place of Edmund and is killed by the witch but is soon resurrected under an even “Deeper” magic.  Along with Aslan’s army, the Pevensies fight a vicious battle against the witch’s minions and eventually triumph, vanquishing the witch and freeing all the creatures that were turned to stone.  Spring returns and the four are crowned Kings and Queens of Narnia, ruling peacefully for many years into their adulthoods.  One day while out hunting, they come across the entrance leading to the wardrobe.  Stumbling back into their own world, they are children once again and discover that in this realm, no time has passed since they entered the wardrobe.

I read this book many years ago as a child, enjoying the fantastical adventures without recognizing all the religious themes imbedded throughout the story.  I did not remember much about the book when we watched Narnia, a joint Crow’s Theatre/Soulpepper musical production based mainly LWW with a few references to later books.  Experiencing the tale as an adult, the references to Christianity now seem so apparent.  Aslan is obviously a Jesus figure who dies for the sins of others and is resurrected, while the children are referenced as offsprings tracing back to Adam and Eve, the Witch could refer to Satan and Edmund’s temptation for Turkish Delight might allude to the “Original Sin”.

As is the tradition of Bad Hat Theatre, who developed the show, this rendition of LWW is presented as a musical. Songs composed by the actor Landon Doak, who plays Edmund, are added sporadically to the action. Actor-musicians play instruments on stage including violin, guitar, piano, accordion, bass, drums and other rhythm-making apparatus, often while in character and as part of the choreography during fight scenes.  It seems lately that more and more shows are using actor-musicians although it is not clear whether this is an artistic choice or a cost-savings decision?  Another trend that seems prevalent these days is to have the actors/musicians roam around on stage for an extended period of time prior to the start of the performance.  This was a bit confusing in this show since the jigs and reels being played evoked a Maritime kitchen party feel, which while entertaining, had nothing to do with the vibe of the show once it started.

The play makes a major plot change to the source material by making the four children not blood relatives but fellow orphaned evacuees.  This deviation allowed the concept of the “found family” to be highlighted, where bonds of love, loyalty and community span beyond blood ties.  The children come from different ethnicities (White, Black, Asian) and to further extend the ideas of diversity and inclusiveness to the LGBTQ communities, Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are now Mr. and Mr. Beaver. While the outfits of the children seem too modern for the 1940s setting, the elaborate costumes of the characters from Narnia are fitting, especially the luminous bejeweled robes and crown of the White Witch.

One artistic decision that I questioned was not transforming the stage more to represent the magic of Narnia.  The set was designed to represent the old Victorian manor and in particular, the room with the wardrobe whose doors opened up to reveal a bunch of coats hanging from the racks.  When the children crawled into the wardrobe and then emerged into “Narnia”, the only visual indication of this was some “snow” falling from above and a lamp post off to one side.  There was no backdrop depicting a winter wonderland with glistening trees, shimmering icicles and snow.  Throughout all the Narnia scenes, we stared at the original set of the mansion in the background.  A pair of moving stairs were pushed around to help choreograph scenes of traversing over terrain but it was difficult to conjure the enchantment of this mythical land without any visual cues.

In fact, it was the lobby of the Soulpepper Theatre that was decked out in a fashion closer to how I imagined Narnia should look like.  There were tinsels hanging from rafters to represent icicles, several large Christmas trees decorated with lights and bulbs, a tangle of interwoven frosted tree limbs covered with shards of ice within Narnia’s forest and a cool blue hue to reflect the cold winter enveloping the land.  There was even an entrance into the theatre with coats hanging from above to give you the impression of stepping through the wardrobe.  Perhaps this was to allow those who did not have tickets to the show to take part in the world of Narnia.  Too bad the ones who did watch did not get that extended experience on stage.

Theatre 2025: Ava - Secret Conversations @ CAA Theatre

Ava Gardner (1922-1990) was a famous American actress working under contract for MGM between 1941-1986, which overlapped Hollywood’s Golden Age.  Known for her stunning looks and famous husbands as much as for her movie roles including “The Killers”, “Show Boat”, “The Barefoot Contessa”, “Night of the Iguana” and “Mogambo”, Gardner was dubbed “The World’s Most Beautiful Animal”.  She was briefly married to Mickey Rooney (1942-43), Artie Shaw (1945-46), and Frank Sinatra (1951-57).  All this can be discovered from a basic Google or Wikipedia search.

It was a bit of a disappointment to watch the play “Ava: Secret Conversations” which was based on a collaborative autobiography of Gardner that was ghost-written by Peter Evans.  Despite the implicit promises of the title, there were not really any new insights about the star.  Rather, the play focuses on the period in 1988, towards the end of Ava’s life, when Evans and Gardner held multiple private interviews in preparation for the book, only to have it all fall apart at the end. Gardner walked away from the project out of loyalty to Sinatra after learning that Evans had been successfully sued for libel by Ava's last husband, who she considered the love of her life despite their divorce.  Instead, Gardner worked with other writers on “Ava: My Story” which was published a few months after her death in 1990.  Peter Evans’ book was not published until 2013, a year after his death, after Gardner’s estate finally granted permission.

The role of Ava is played by Elizabeth McGovern of Downton Abbey fame, who also wrote the screenplay adapted from Evan’s book.  If McGovern’s portrayal is accurate, in the last years of Ava’s life, she was skittish, acerbic, foul-mouthed, temperamental and elusive in revealing much detail about her personal life.  The sole humorous moment in the play was when Ava protested about all the swearing that Evans had included in the biography but did so by cursing like a sailor. On the whole, I thought her performance felt overwrought and whether that was because of the acting or what was required by the screenplay, both can be attributed back to McGovern.

Aaron Costa Ganis, in the role of Peter Evans, fares much better.  He also portrays all three of Ava’s husbands, aptly mimicking each of them while video cues in the background help to clarify which character he is playing.  In particular, in the role of Sinatra, Costa Ganis does such a great job of singing “I’ve Got You Under My Skin” that I watched closely to determine whether he was lip-syncing (he wasn’t). Towards the end of the show as the relationship between Evans and Gardner was fraying, there was implication that Evans had fallen for Gardner, which does not seem to be substantiated by history and could have been added just for dramatic purposes.

In the end, I found this play to be lightweight and not that memorable. For me, the two most intriguing questions that arose from attending this show were not even about the content of the play.  The first was why no photographs were allowed, even at curtain call.  Most shows encourage you to take photos at curtain call and post them as part of free publicity, which you would think this show could use.   The second was why Elizabeth McGovern looked so shockingly thin? Perhaps she always looks like this but you couldn’t tell from watching Downton Abbey since she wore long sleeves and flowing outfits and we never saw her bare limbs.

Theatre 2025: CHILD-ish @ Tarragon Theatre

My husband Rich and I watch so many shows in a year just based on our 3 subscriptions to Main Mirvish, Off Mirvish and Crow’s Theatre alone that I am reluctant to add many more to our plate.  This is especially true since I want to write about the shows that I watch and am overwhelmed when they come too frequently.  Rich, on the other hand, is tempted by every good review that he reads in the paper.  This is how we ended up buying last minute tickets to CHILD-ish at Tarragon Theatre.

CHILD-ish is a “verbatim play” meaning that the dialogue of the work is taken directly from words spoken by people in real-life interviews.  These words are reproduced by actors exactly as the original speaker said them, including any pauses, hesitation words, coughs or other verbal ticks.  We have watched other verbatim plays in the past, including the musical London Road where the lyrics of songs are taken from interviews of residents of Ipswich, UK as they discuss their fears about a serial killer preying on their town.  Taking the concept of a verbatim play to extremes is Dana H where the actress actually lip-syncs the words from an interview that was pre-recorded and is playing on the sound system.

In CHILD-ish, playwright/interviewer Sunny Drake spent multiple years interviewing over 40 children from ages 5-12 on a variety of topics, then selected and edited together interesting and poignant moments to form a play.  The set resembles an office break-out room with a wide screen on the back wall, two round plush stools, and a segmented couch that is pulled apart and reconfigured into separate formations throughout the play.  An actor portrays Sunny conducting the interviews but the spin or conceit of the show is that four adults portray an amalgamation of the various children, providing their responses and reactions verbatim and as delivered by the children.  Yet these actors are dressed like adults in office attire (one is even in a suit and tie) and try hard not to “act like children” as they literally speak the words out of the mouths of babes. 

The interview starts comically as the interviewees get a feel for what their boundaries are, gently pushing the limits to see what is allowed.  Can they say whatever they want and the adults will be forced to repeat what was said?  Can they cluck like chickens (as the four proceed to do so while strutting around)?  Can they swear?  One interviewee proceeds to sing a song about unicorns, claiming to be one as the others all mimic a unicorn’s horn with their finger.

They are first asked some soft questions covering topics including love, friendship, dating, and marriage (as seen through the eyes of 5 years olds!).  “What do you think love is?”, “How do you know if someone likes you?”, “How can you get someone to like you”.  The responses are genuine, spontaneous, refreshing, sometimes surprising, and occasionally quite funny, especially when coming from younger kids while being spoken by adult actors.  After the interviewer (Sunny) asked questions for a while, it was decided that some of the older children could interview him, and then each other.  Eventually more serious topics are broached including bullying, self-harm, depression, consent, racism, immigration, war, death, and the state of the world including climate change.  Hearing such brutally honest, intelligent and touching responses in this format makes one realize that more attention should be paid to what children say and feel.  We should not need to channel these thoughts through adults in order to give them the gravitas that they deserve.

From this perspective, the play worked for us and we found it both entertaining and enlightening. One segment where the kids complained about their parents being on their cell phone devices too much, not being present, and paying too little attention really struck home.  Another impactful interaction dealt with consent and seemed to come from the dialog of a fairly young girl who complained that she didn’t always want to be kissed by the little boy that she planned to marry, but didn’t feel like she could say no since she didn’t want to hurt his feelings.  It drove home how early this concept of consent becomes relevant and needs to be taught.

Where the play fell apart for us is during the second half of the 70-minute show when an attempt at audience participation felt forced and unnecessary.  The lights were turned on and the audience was directed to pair up and interview one another with a set of questions that were projected on a screen.  Full disclosure, but Rich and I really dislike shows that include audience participation and avoid going to them if at all possible.  We also make sure never to sit on the aisles or in the front rows for these types of shows so that we won’t be picked. While there regularly are trigger warnings about loud noises, smoke, coarse language, etc. in the description of a show, there is rarely, if ever, a warning about audience participation and there should be!  

Then a bunch of children appeared on stage and played a game where they used the couch sections and stools to create various animals out of them.  It was not clear what the point of this part was, other than to provide an example of what it was like interviewing and interacting with the actual children.  Finally, the play ended with the audience being prompted to stand and repeat the “children’s manifesto” which was highlighted on the screen, including “Listen to Kids!!!” and “Play, Play, Play”.  None of these last scenes resonated with us and ended up detracting from what was initially an interesting and promising premise.  We would have preferred that the show just stuck to the interview format and provide more examples of what was said by the kids since we found that part to be fascinating.

At the post show talkback, one of the actresses talked about the actors needing to keep on an “adult mask” when saying their lines in order to treat the words seriously and with respect, which worked fairly well until they had to cluck like chickens and act like unicorns.  She also quoted a newspaper review that said it was too bad it takes hearing the valid thoughts of children coming out of the mouths of adults for them to be taken seriously.  One fun moment came when a question from the audience ended up being from the father of the actor playing Sunny.  She prefaced her response with “Hi Dad! That’s my father!”  If he had been used as a plant used to get the questions rolling, it worked!

Theatre 2025: The Veil @ Crow's Theatre

I arrived at Crow’s Theatre to watch The Veil with some trepidation since I had been forewarned that it is a creepy show with elements of horror and effects meant to make you jump.  This genre is definitely not in my wheelhouse or comfort zone, so I braced myself for what was to come.  Seeing the promotional image for the show did nothing to ease my unrest.  This modern gothic-horror psychological thriller deals with the ramifications of “selling your soul to the devil” to achieve your deepest desires and whether the prize is worth the cost and consequences.  There have been other plays with similar themes in the past including Faust, The Picture of Dorian Grey and even the musical comedy Damn Yankees.  This Canadian play conveys its plot in an innovative, low-key fashion with restrained use of lighting, sound, and even scent effects to set the mood.  There weren’t any scenes with blood and gore, creepy dim lights and shadows, thunder and bolts of lightning or typical scary musical queues.  Instead, most of the tension and scares were left to your own imagination as your listen riveted to story.

We were seated in Crow’s Theatre’s smaller, intimate Studio Theatre space facing glass windows that revealed the streetlights outside, the passing traffic, and the reflections of the audience.  My husband Rich and I were commenting on how distracting that would be during the play when suddenly a man appears outside, pounding on the glass pane and demanding to be let in.  It is the unnamed protagonist of this one-man show who comes running in through a side door after being admitted by an usher. He silently pulls down blackened blinds to cover the windows, then proceeds to pour salt from a container to create a large circle around a chair and table.  Throughout the one-act play, he paces around this “protective magic circle” as he tells his tale, beginning with urgent pleas that “we have to believe him!!”.

The man explains that he is an overly ambitious lawyer who would go to any lengths to make partner at his law firm, including working ridiculous hours, manipulating clients who have hopeless cases to generate more billable hours, and neglecting his wife and young child. When the senior partner Ed offers to make him partner if he agrees to take over the burden of a dreaded curse that has plagued Ed for years, the man eagerly agrees.  He does not really believe in the veracity of the curse and sees this as a way to gain the power, money and glory that he craves.  He soon finds out that the deal that he made releases an evil spirit which is the manifestation of all his past sins and misdeeds.

Once he takes on this curse, the malevolent supernatural force begins to rear its ugly head in a slow and sinister fashion.  As the man describes the strange occurrences that start to happen to both him and his family, the set is punctuated with subtle flashes of lights, and an ominous low hum that you need to strain to hear.  Repeatedly he whips around, trying to catch sight of a presence that he feels behind his shoulder.

Actor Bryon Abalos is mesmerizing as he holds the audience spellbound for 85 minutes spinning his tale. Continuously traversing around the salt circle as he passes close to the audience who are seated on three sides of the stage, he pauses and looks directly into your eyes, making you feel like he is talking directly to you alone.

The premise and manner of presentation is very interesting although I did not feel that the repercussions of the curse actually paralleled the man’s described “sins”.  However, the conclusion of the play was one of the most unique finales that we have ever experienced and left the audience in shocked, uneasy silence for several minutes.  Once again, Crow’s Theatre has programmed a daring, thoughtful show and major kudos to them for continuing to support Canadian theatre.

Theatre 2025: Bright Star @ CAA Theatre

My husband Rich and I watch a lot of live theatre in a year, which can be both a blessing and a curse, as we are always excited to see a show but are sometimes exhausted and over-stimulated from all the new ideas coming our way.  By the end of 2025, we will have watched 30 shows, not including the five that we saw at the Toronto Fringe Festival, eight that we took in at Edinburgh Fringe in Scotland, and twelve that we watched at home from a variety of streaming services including National Theatre at Home (London),  Stratford at Home (Ontario), Youtube and CNN (with a special broadcast of George Clooney’s Good Night and Good Luck).

We are subscribers to both of Mirvish Productions’ main and off-Mirvish subscription series as well as Crow’s Theatre.  This makes September/October a particularly busy span since all the major theatres seem to start their new seasons at around the same time in mid to late September. Just scheduling all these shows so that there is no conflict becomes a nightmare. This means that we have been watching one to two shows every week for four consecutive weeks.  Trying to keep up and write down my thoughts in my theatre blog about one show before it gets jumbled in with the next has been difficult and stressful.  I need to keep reminding myself that I love it! 😊

But seeing so many shows so closely together naturally fosters comparisons.  This week, we watched the extremely complex, cerebral musical Octet on Tuesday night immediately followed by the light, fluffy and totally predictable bluegrass musical Bright Star the next evening.  Experiencing the two shows back-to-back made their differences even more apparent.  While they were both enjoyable in their own ways, it would be like watching the weird and wacky 1999 movie Being John Malkovich immediately followed by any Christmas Hallmark movie.

The book, music and lyrics of Bright Star were written by comedian/banjo player Steve Martin and his writing partner Edie Brickell.  The plot is set in two separate time periods, current day 1945 shortly after the end of WWII and flashbacks to 1923.  In current day, Alice Murphy, the prim and proper editor of the Ashville Southern Journal and her two employees Daryl and Lucy, are approached by young writer Billy Cane, who has just returned from the war and hopes to sell his stories to the newspaper.  Flashbacks depict how Alice was once a wild child who fell in love with Jimmy Ray Dobbs, the mayor’s only child, became pregnant by him and had his son.  Wielding his wealth and power, Mayor Dobbs takes the baby away from Alice, declaring that he will find him a good home.  In actuality, he dramatically flings the bag containing the child from a moving train into the river to close the first act of the musical.  At this point, most of the audience have worked out the present-day relationship between Alice and Billy in this corny, predictable plot.

Despite the story being trite and lacking sophistication or nuance, the musical is still an enjoyable, feel-good show with the expected happy ending.  Interestingly, the shocking event that drives the plot is actually based on a true story that Steve and Edie learned about.  In 1904, a baby stuffed inside a suitcase was thrown from a moving train yet miraculously survived.  Dubbed the “Iron Mountain Baby”, the infant was found by a farmer by the side of a river.  The farmer and his wife adopted the baby and named him William Moses Gould Helms.  So, the most incredulous and melodramatic plot point in the musical actually turned out to be based on truth!

Bright Star is considered an “Actor-Musician” musical where the actors also play musical instruments while on stage, combining acting, singing, dancing and instrumentation. Reading the actor biographies in the programme, it is revealed that each actor plays multiple instruments.  Instruments played on stage included the piano, percussions, bass, cello, violin, viola, fiddle, mandolin, banjo, accordion, and bugle. When not featured in a song, actors would pick up an instrument and join the on-stage “orchestra”.  Sometimes even the lead singer would be playing an instrument while performing his or her song.  It was impressive how these talented actor-musicians seamlessly switched from instrument to instrument in between their acting responsibilities.

With a show oozing of Southern charm and Americana nostalgia, the songs include lilting ballads ("She’s Gone", "Way Back in the Day", "I Can’t Wait"), lively ditties backed by fiddle/banjo chords and square-dance like beats (“Whoa Mama", "Firm Hand/Do Right”) and overwrought, ultra melodramatic songs ("Please Don’t Take Him", "A Man’s Gotta Do", "Heartbreaker") that would fit in with Latin telenovas if they were produced as musicals.  The characters spoke and sang on and off with such heavy twangs that you expected them to shout out “Yee Haw!” at any moment.

The leading man role of Jimmy Ray Dobbs is played by the tall, dark and handsome (and alas, openly gay) Canadian actor George Krissa who seems to be in all the recent Mirvish musicals lately.  He played the sexy scoundrel Anatole in Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, stealing the show with his gratuitous (“but absolutely essential” said every woman in the audience) shirtless scene where he flexed his pecs with a sly grin.  The closest we got to that in Bright Star was a flexed bicep while wearing a tight t-shirt during the song “Whoa Mama”.  It does seem like he is being typecast in roles that take advantage of his good looks.  After this show, he will play the sexy, tight pants wearing William Shakespeare in &Juliet.  Good thing he is a legitimate quadruple threat with his acting, singing, dancing and musical instrument playing skills.  Seems almost unfair to have all that in one package.

Compared to the many other musicals that we have watched over the years or even this just year, this is a simplistic musical with predictable tropes and archetypical characters.  The villainous Mayor came just short of twirling his mustache.  But every once in a while, it feels good to relax, put your brain into neutral and just enjoy a show without having to overthink it.

Theatre 2025: Octet @ Crow's Theatre

Almost right from the start when listening to the songs in the musical Octet, it is quite apparent that Dave Malloy, the composer/lyrist of this musical, was also behind the 2016 Broadway hit Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, as well as the 2015 Off-Broadway musical Ghost Quartet.  All three shows share Malloy’s distinctive compositional style and have a similar sound to them.  His songs are often written in the minor key with dissonant notes and chord progressions, off-beat timings, complex harmonies and haunting melodies that have an operatic or chamber music feel, as well as wide vocal ranges that have strong emotional and narrative arcs.

Although the three musicals have vastly different plots and themes, they each have an air of mysticism and spirituality to them, since this seems to be a fascination of Malloy’s. In the song cycle Ghost Quartet, this was obvious both from the title and the eerie tales that each of four storytellers spin about life, death, magic, reincarnation, revenge and more.  In Natasha, Pierre and the Great Comet of 1812, which is based on a small section of the novel War and Peace, the mysticism comes from the eponymous comet.  Usually seen as a cosmic omen of untold horrors including war or the end of the world, Pierre saw it as a spiritual awakening and sign of hope for a new beginning. 

Octet is Dave Malloy’s most recent musical which opened off-Broadway in May 2019.  Compared to the other two, this is his most contemporary work in terms of timeframe, setting and theme.  It deals with eight technology-obsessed people who have convened at a self-help group meeting for Internet addicts.  In Octet’s original staging in New York, Malloy linked each song and character to one of the cards in a Major Arcana tarot deck, using the symbolism of the cards to reflect each person’s addiction and struggles.  By adding an element of the occult, he wanted to contrast “the coldness of technology with a hope for spiritual awakening and human connection”.  To that end, the off-Broadway production used the tarot card of “The Fool” modified to hold a mobile phone on the front of its programme cover and listed the pairings of cards to characters in an insert.  There were also explicit references within the dialogue.

The Toronto production at Crow's Theatre made an artistic decision to downplay the tarot card connection, choosing to concentrate more on the emotional themes rather than spiritual elements.  While references in the songs and dialog to tarot cards remained either explicitly (“I am the Magician”, “You are the Hanged Man”, “The Tower Tea Ceremony”) or through imagery and symbolism (The Moon, The Lovers, The Devil, The World), the programme and set design do not directly reinforce these connections.  Instead, to pay tribute to Malloy’s intentions without layering them into the production, prior to several Tuesday performances free Tarot Card Readings are offered in the lobby two hours before the start of the show.  A few minutes prior to the start of the show, Paula, the leader of the group, sat at a table dealing out tarot cards but these were put away once the musical began.  Electronic screens lined the walls of the theatre and their images changed with each scene, not quite displaying the images of tarot cards but pixelated representations of elements like the Sun, Moon or Hearts (love).  I wholeheartedly agree with this choice, since the main subject matter about various Internet addictions and the lyrics describing them were complex enough on their own without having to deal with understanding the tarot references as well!

Octet is an acapella chamber choir musical where all the songs are sung without instrumental accompaniment.  The self-help group uses the singing of hymns and personal confessionals as part of their “step-program” to confront and deal with their obsessions.  In the group songs where the cast all sing together, their voices blend beautifully with all the vocal ranges represented from soprano to bass.  For the solo numbers, the various voices of the other cast members set the tempo and provide harmonic accompaniment for each lead singer.  Each song begins with the playing of a pitch pipe, which provides a clear, precise starting note to allow the singers to tune their voices for that song.

The meeting starts with a soothing group hymn titled “The Forest” which describes a metaphorical safe space where they can digitally detox and try to escape from “the Monster”, which is the Internet.  The song ends with “I have screensaver-ed the forest, to remind me there are places that the Monster doesn’t go.” Then Paula asks for volunteers to give testimonials about their addiction and how it is impacting their lives and each of them begin with the typical statement “I am an addict”.  The songs start by addressing more common addictions that are easily relatable but eventually get weirder and weirder.

Jessica has a viral video online of herself acting horribly and has been publicly shamed and “canceled”.  Yet she cannot resist obsessively googling herself or as she terms it “ego-surfing” almost as a punishment for her bad behaviour.  Her song is called “Refresh” which has a double meaning as she sings of going to the Forest with no reception so as to refresh, but the chanting chorus singing “Refresh” also refers to her continued search for posts about herself.

Henry is addicted to playing online games including “candy-themed games” in a veiled reference to the popular 3-D puzzle video game “Candy Crush”.  He plays so often that he isolates himself and gets so obsessed that he stops taking care of personal hygiene and stops taking his medication.  Using “Candy” as a metaphor for his gaming obsession, he talks about tooth decay and rotting his teeth as a symbol or the rotting of his brain.  It is interesting that “candy” is a slang for drugs such as cocaine since Henry sings with such fervour that it feels like a drug addiction.  For the choreography of his song, the electronic floor on the stage lights up and becomes a gaming video screen.

Paula sings "Glow" about her husband’s obsession with nighttime scrolling on his cellphone in bed with the “lighting up the sheets with … the sallow blue glow of a screen” and I abashedly thought “guilty”!  Karly and Ed are each lonely souls addicted to dating apps and porn apps. Ironically titled "Solo" but sung as a duet, they alternately provide counterpoint to each other’s experiences as they each crave physical interaction IRL.  Toby has gone down the rabbit hole of doomscrolling and conspiracy theories. Marvin is a scientist who is obsessed with scientific forums and needs to make rational sense of all occurrences.  He describes a surreal experience with a “Little God” who performs inexplicable miracles, highlighting the cost of excessive intellectualization.  I found this song the most difficult to understand and relate to.  Singing last, Velma who is new to the group sings “Beautiful” the only song that reminds us there are positive aspects of the Internet including allowing isolated, alienated people to make online connections.  Suffering from self-loathing and poor self-image, Velma learns to accept and like herself after meeting another girl across the sea who is just like her.  Sung in the middle of the show with a tribal beat, the song that best sums up the musical’s theme for me is “Monster” where the group metaphorically sings about the Internet monster - “As you watch the monster, it digs deeper in your brain. Transforming neural pathways with its toxic refrain”.

Octet is an innovative, challenging and intellectually stimulating show with an important message and warning.  It felt like we were immersed in an episode of Black Mirror.  The choice of singing all the songs acapella was unique and memorable, but also fit into the theme of the show, using the purity of human voices to contrast against the disease of addiction to technology and the internet.

In the talkback session after the show, a question was asked about whether new technological advancements have been added to the show since its 2019 inception.  The answer was that some changes were proposed but they mostly referred to isolation felt during COVID lockdowns and how the Internet was sometimes the only available source of connection. The advance of AI has not been addressed but maybe would be something to consider for the future versions?  There was also much discussion about how difficult it was to sing without an orchestra or conductor and how the cast was responsible for keeping each other in tune and on beat, especially with the difficult, unsyncopated timings of some of the songs.

Theatre 2025: The Welkin @ Soulpepper Baillie Theatre

The Welkin is the fictionalized story by playwright Lucy Kirkwood which is based on historical legal precedence and practice.  In 18th Century England, if a woman was sentenced to be executed while pregnant, she could “plead the belly”.  A jury of 12 women who had personally experienced pregnancy (and thus considered “experts”) were assembled to determine the veracity of the claim.  If they deemed her claim to be true, the execution would be stayed and converted into a banishment to “the colonies”, thus sparing her life (as well as the baby’s).

In this play, Sally Poppy is a poor, crass and unlikeable young woman with a troubled upbringing who left her unhappy marriage to run off with her lover Thomas.  The pair have been convicted of brutally murdering and dismembering a wealthy young girl and both are sentenced to be executed.  In fact, Thomas has already been hanged for the crime.  Sally has declared that she is with child, although it is early days and she is not yet showing.  A group of twelve matrons have been assembled to determine if there is truth to her claim.  The women of this “jury” are to be sequestered in a cold, dark room without access to food, drink, fire (heat) or light, so as to compel them to come more quickly to a unanimous verdict.  There is documented evidence that this harsh practice was actually used on male juries during this period in history but whether these methods were applied to a female jury is less clear.  This may merely be included in the play for dramatic purposes.

Most of the women did not willingly agree to participate in the jury since the process would take them away from chores and duties at home.  The few women who voluntarily signed up to “see justice done” were wealthy and had the luxury of time.  It is clear that the women do not have the training or medical expertise to render a valid judgement based on fact.  Much of their discussions of how to determine if a woman is pregnant are based on unscientific anecdotes, superstitions and personal experiences.

The one woman who should have carried some credibility is the midwife Lizzy, who had delivered many of the children for the women in the jury.  She shows compassion for Sally and wants to give her the benefit of the doubt.  Others feeling less charitable are basing their judgement on classism against the poor, horror at the crime that Sally is complicit in, calling her evil and the devil’s spawn, or harbouring prejudice against her based on previous crimes that she is deemed to have committed including theft and potentially harming another boy.  Although their job is to determine if she is pregnant, it is difficult for the women not to judge her based on her crimes instead and assume that she is lying.  When the option arises to get the opinion of a male doctor, the women spurn Lizzie’s expertise in his favour, highlighting the misogyny and sexism of the times, even amongst women.

Being touted as “12 Angry Women”, the parallels to the 1954 play/Henry Fonda movie “12 Angry Men” are apparent.  This includes one woman trying to sway the opinion of the others, and the juror who just wants to get it over with so that she can leave and will vote whichever way is more expedient to set her free.  There are also elements of The Crucible with references to witchcraft, demons, superstitions and mob mentality while the ending gives a nod to Of Mice and Men.

One underlying theme throughout the play is the cyclical nature of oppression as well as class and gender inequality as symbolized by Halley’s Comet which was passing by during the timeframe of the play.  The comet represents spirituality and a sign from heaven, but its cyclical nature is also used to emphasize how not much has changed through the generations.  To further emphasize this point, Kirkwood includes intentionally jarring anachronisms throughout the play.  Within the dialog, she includes modern swear words and inexplicable references to modern technology such as “aeroplanes”.  In one scene, a song is sung in the cadence of a hymn but eventually it starts to sound familiar.  The song ends up being Kate Bush’s “Running Up That Hill” whose lyrics involve a couple making a deal with God to be allowed to understand each other’s perspectives.

But the most out of the blue anachronism occurs in the middle of a heated debate between the women when suddenly a modern-day housekeeper comes out with a vacuum cleaner, pushing it around for a few minutes while listening to music from her headphones, and then departing without a word.  This headshaking event was incorporated to replace the ending scene of Kirkwood’s actual play where all twelve women of the jury appear on stage in current day dress and silently perform modern tasks such as using a dust buster, ironing while watching TV, defrosting a freezer, etc. when they look up and see the comet again.  This scene would have paralleled a scene at the beginning of the play when the twelve women are shown performing 18th century tasks.  That sequence would have driven home the point that Kirkwood was trying to make while the replacement snippet was just confusing.  I understand why they cut out this final scene since it would have diluted from the shocking event that happens just before it, so there are pros and cons for both artistic decisions.

This show was a co-production between Soulpepper and Crow’s Theatre.  As always, you can count on a Crow’s show to be thought-provoking if not always cheerful or heartwarming.  For that, we need to go to back Mirvish Theatres and re-watch Tell Tale Harbour.