Theatre 2026: Our Little Secret @ CAA Theatre

My husband Rich and I watch so much live theatre each year (30-40 shows) and have seen so many plays and musicals over the preceding decades that any new performance which we now attend gets compared with all the ones from the past. It is getting more difficult to find a show that does not feel at least slightly derivative and even harder to find one that generates that pure sense of enjoyment from being thoroughly entertained for an entire evening.

Using Rich’s analogy, we have watched shows where we come out of the theatre feeling like we just ate a big bowl of kale. Understanding that something is good for you doesn’t mean you like the taste of it. There are plays that we appreciate artistically and intellectually but don’t really enjoy watching. They might be too depressing, too slow, too long, too confusing, too thematically heavy-handed or too intentionally shock-provoking. After watching such shows, we look at each other and say “That was kale”.

That feeling of pure theatrical joy where you leave feeling happily buoyant but still intellectually stimulated is hard to come by. We were lucky enough to feel it after watching the first show of our 2026/27 Off-Mirvish subscription series.  It was an 85-minute-long one-man autobiographical musical comedy called “Our Little Secret”. Written by actor Noam Tomaschoff, the show describes his discovery of a well-kept family secret and the journey that he and his parents (Gideon and Slyvie) went through as they came to terms with its revelation.

At age 31, Noam saw a sale for a 23andMe DNA kit that he hoped would provide him with insights on ancestry, physical and character traits, and most importantly, potential health issues. Up to then, Noam always believed that he was the only child of a Jewish father and Italian mother. Faced with the probability that Noam would find out through DNA testing, his parents finally disclosed to him that Gideon was not his biological father. Instead, due to his father’s infertility issues, Noam was conceived with the sperm from an anonymous donor. Cycling through feelings of shock, anger, betrayal as well as curiosity, Noam set up to find out more about his biological father and discovered not only “Captain Jack”, a flamboyant, American/Irish commercial pilot, but also that he had 35 half-siblings that were also sired using Jack’s prolific sperm.

Having grown up as a theatre kid and now as a working performer, Noam naturally processed his angst and emotions about this discovery by writing a musical with the help of his close childhood friends Ryan, who wrote the music, and Russell, who co-wrote the book. Our Little Secret first appeared in the 2023 Toronto Fringe Festival. The three friends reached out, hoping that Come From Away producer Michael Rubinoff would come watch their show. When his schedule prevented him from doing so, Michael sent Mirvish Marketing/Programming director John Karastamatis instead. Seeing potential in what he watched, John sent the trio lengthy notes on how to further develop the show, which they did over the next three years. The comedy went to Edinburgh Fringe in 2024, Montreal in 2025 and Edmonton in October 2026 before ending up at Mirvish’s CAA Theatre in November.

What started as a raw 60-minute Fringe show that focused on the comedic and wacky parts of this story has since been expanded into a 90-minute play. It is still a high-energy, fun-filled, hilarious comedy but has added emotional depth and vulnerability to the depictions of Noam and his parents, giving this personal tale a heart. In addition to portraying Noam’s past tensions with his father that become amplified by the revelation of this secret, we also get his parents’ perspectives. Dialogue and text relay Gideon’s feelings of shame and dismay at not being able to biologically produce a son, and Sylvie’s weariness from being the constant buffer between her husband and son.

Beyond enhancing the content and pacing of the plot, the latest version of Our Little Secret has leveled up on the stagecraft including using a live 4-piece band to provide the music, and more intricate sets and lighting design.  A multi-leveled set represents the family cottage to the left, Noam’s apartment in the centre and an entryway/door frame on the right. Shelves are populated with lantern-like objects including childhood keepsakes that light up in various colours to reflect the current mood of the musical. These props reminded me of an exhibit from this year’s Nuit Blanche called “The Museum of Lost Objects” which also featured lit-up keepsakes. Broadway star Adam Pascal (the original Roger from Rent) was hired to reshape the staging and choreography of the piece, using the multi-level space to propel Noam across the stage and even into the audience at one point. A video screen displayed at the end of the musical show images of Noam with some of the siblings that he has found so far, photos of Jack, and ones of Gideon playing ping pong (one of his many interests).

The fabulous songs that Noam and Ryan wrote range from funny to touching with stellar, fast-paced dialogue that provide important exposition and advances the plot. The opening song asking “What Comes Next” outlines the central conflict in speak/sing fashion while a song that transitions from the question “What is a Man” to “What is a Dad” outlines identity crisis and self-doubt felt by both Noam and Gideon. A potentially emotionally charged reenactment where Sylvie and Gideon meet with a fertility doctor is undercut and turned into a hilarious scene through the use of sock puppets to portray his parents while they sing about “Our Little Secret”.  As Noam starts to find out more about his “bio-dad”, he portrays him in the jazzy “Captain Jack”, and when he finally meets one of his half siblings, he sings the rowdy song “Two Brothers”.  One aspect of the performance that I was thrilled about was the excellent acoustics and perfect volume balance between the singing and background music that allowed me to hear every word and follow the storyline perfectly. This is so often not the case in shows that we have watched in the past.

For some reason this season, for our past two Mirvish and Off-Mirvish shows, our subscription seats have been assigned to opening night performance. This was a detriment when we watched Operation Mincemeat since all the kinks had not been worked out yet, leading to poor acoustics and a major technical issue that resulted in a significant delay to the start of the show, without the issue being successfully resolved.  I was therefore a bit leery when we were at opening night for Our Little Secret as well, but it turned out to be magical.  The show went off without a glitch and we had a couple of added bonuses. Before the performance began, Noam’s best friends and co-creators Ryan and Russell came out for an introductory speech where they talked about how the show’s journey and how thrilled they were to be in a Mirvish production.  Then at the end of the show, Noam announced that his parents were in the audience and pointed them out to massive applause.

That was the perfect ending to a wonderful show that had me smiling and laughing from start to finish, with a slight teary sniffle during the touching moments. Rich and I walked out of this show with a bounce to our steps, slightly giddy at how much we enjoyed what we just watched.

We had one final laugh at home when we reviewed the program, reading the biographies of the actors and creative team. The last entry was a tongue-in-cheek credit given to 23andMe as “Twist Choreographer” with a hilarious “biographical writeup”. You could not ask for better product placement or free publicity!