The Toronto Theatre Review: Tarragon’s Guilt (A Love Story) & Theatre Passe Muraille/Modern Times Stage’s As I Must Live It

By Ross

It’s all about the one in the center, and after taking in the heavy, twisted, and intense one-person show, Huff at the Grand Theatre in London Ontario earlier this week, I found myself entering back into the Toronto Theatre world for another two, albeit very different, but somewhat similar one-person shows that etched out very specific landscapes for each of the talented writers/performers to spin out from. Each in their own very particular and very personal way, and both from an internal force that, turns out, is impossible to ignore.

The first was on Valentine’s Day, entitled, ever so appropriately for the day, Guilt (A Love Story) at Tarragon Theatre. How perfect. The second is the very inventive As I Must Live It, at Theatre Passe Muraille. Both excellent streams of confession, manifested out of personal trauma, pain, and pride or joy, and brought to the stage in an exuberant style overflowing with energy and determination by the writer and the performer. And I have one more play to go this weekend (after a slight detour into the magical land of Dion at The Coal Mine), when I see (the non-one-person show) De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail at Soulpepper, although I think that will have a very different edge than the shows I saw over the last few nights.

Both of the opening night shows are an experience in personality and pain to remember, led by high-wattage performing balls of light, with big proclamations and endless amounts of style and energy. They each usher us into the space with a unique personal flair and differing edges that engage; one fueled by tequila, wine, and a historical tradition of self-doubt and confidence; the other filled to overflowing with familial love, need, and mental health complications, drunk in from a faulty water bottle that needs to be replaced. Or it could be Jamaican rum in that bottle. But I doubt it. 

The first one begins with a shot inside the Tarragon Theatre. The energy is high and excited, as the writer and performer, Diane Flacks (Tarragon’s Waiting Room), makes her way in from the lobby for her fifth one-person show in the space. She comes in big, carrying a tray of tequila shots for the willing few who took her up on her offering. I wish one of those shots were within my reach, as a bit of tequila wouldn’t hurt the hearing of her one-person show Guilt (A Love Story) as it dances its way into our frame. The premise is intoxicating, like the drinking that Diane says she doesn’t have a problem with. “I feel better when I’m drinking“, she tells us as she opens up seeing how that could be read a bit wrong. But this is not the story she is intent on telling. Oh no, it is something far more complicated and engaging than that. That old alcoholic story we have heard, in a way, before, but what Flacks has in store is something entirely hers, and one that piques our interest pretty much from the get-go.

“Drinking numbs the guilt,” is also something she leads us in with, but that’s no surprise, and as the references fly fast and furious forward, rattling the cage bars with funny intent, Guilt (A Love Story) finds its true force in the unraveling of a family and a partnership. But she isn’t the typical victim in the stereotypical tale. She is the one who opens this thing up and runs a bit wild with her newfound freedom. She is the one who left, found passion and excitement outside, and she is also the one who has to take on the Guilt.

It’s a captivatingly funny unpacking, filled with formulations and characterizations that connect with the passion and the raw guilt that has been found, like “a raccoon in my chest” clanging and banging on the bars. And as directed smoothly by Alisa Palmer (Tarragon’s Sibs), Flacks finds a way to both laugh and find emotional truth in the matter, walking us through her crumbling marriage and all the ways she tries to hold on to all things important. She radiates pride in her family, but also, slyly, adds that being Jewish leads her easily down the road of self-blame into a landscape filled with Guilt and desperation. Her embodiment of Sigmund Freud steps in for a few moments, giving us a playful intellectual framework on the matter, inhaling deeply the smoke from an imaginary cigar, quite naturally. We also are visited by Flacks’ memorable bubbe who unpacks more in a few one-sided lines of a phone conversation than one can fathom. But it’s the yoga instructor who is the one that seals the deal for me, adding layers of underlying knowledge and insight that can only be matched by Flacks’ characterization of a neuro-scientist explaining it all to us as a glowing brain centers our soul.

Featuring uncomplicated choreography and intimacy coordination by Rebecca Harper (National Theatre School of Canada’s Director of Movement), a somewhat overly complicated diamond island set and costume design by Jung-Hye Kim (Crow’s The Chinese Lady), superb transitional lighting by Leigh Ann Vardy (Stratford’s Richard II) and a solid sound design by Deanna H Choi (Tarragon’s Cockroach), Guilt (A Love Story) and Flacks engage with her complicated unraveling with an expert’s ease. It’s the one with her wife that fills the space, but also the one that gets the shorter end of the stick as the divorce papers get finalized. Her X takes up very little space in this tale, as it centers itself more firmly around the effects this breaking has on her family; mainly her two sons whom she worships and defends like the greatest of wild beast mothers. Her play borders on standup, filling in the gaps with funny asides on culture and Tik-Tok mothering, with some being more engaging than others, Yet, most find their target effectively, pulling the audience along in connected happy engagement even if the framework isn’t as solid as one could hope for. I can’t say that I was completely enraptured from beginning to end, but she is an effective personality and an engaging performer who finds her way through a unique perspective with aplomb and determination.

Over at Theatre Passe Muraille, in co-production with Modern Times Stage, another unraveling comes alive, rollicking playfully forward most wonderfully and emotionally. The show, As I Must Live It, opens up in the lobby, much to my surprise, from the stairs to the floor where a rose is given, as well as a ball and a hat. All are de-thorned and disinfected for our safety, we are told by the exuberant and charmingly sweet Luke Reece, the writer and performer of this one-person rotation. He’s clever and engagingly childlike, as he draws us to the window to tell us a story about a squirrel named Blackie who eventually comes home. It’s an endearing start, metaphorically and creatively, placing the formula in and around the idea of external editing and control; holding high our own particular voice and not giving it up for anything or anybody. We lean in, adoringly, to the imminent unveiling, curious to see more of this captivating and pure adventure that is about to be thrown, like a ball, around by this fantastically talented spoken word artist. We happily follow him into the space to take a seat somewhere in the expanse of the theatre, but we can’t help but feel like we are following some magical pied piper. Maybe more like curious city squirrels than medieval rats that had overrun Hamelin, but the appeal of his identity is strong and true; someone we want to know more about and are eager to engage with.

Under the solid direction of Daniele Bartolini (DLT Experiences’ the stranger…), As I Must Live It dives into familial engagement like an energetic kid in a playground, moving through the wide open spaces of the theatre with an expert focus. The overall experience is of wonder, yet, we are told, it is “haunted by joy” yet filled with an air of stress “cause I wanted to be perfect.” Our expert guide Reece (CBC’s ‘Notice’) starts off curled up inside a colorful pool of papers and playground equipment, courtesy of set and costume designer Jackie Chau (Factory’s The Waltz) and lighting designer Sarah Mansikka (Gloria Grethel Productions’ Elbow Room), delivering poetry with a tender air, but the unedited energy of this engaging performer can’t let him stay still for long. Soon we are transported, playfully and inventively, through his madcap costumed experience, and we just can’t help but stay completely tuned in.

Flying and moving through the space with a strong confidence, Reece touches on so many aspects of childhood, ranging from grandmothers, dinosaurs, Chris Pratt’s Jurassic physique, all the way to Darth Vader and a Star Wars line made famous, even in its incorrectness. That one line repeated incorrectly affected this boy named Luke for many of his most formative years, that is until he was renamed Cool, Hand-ed to Luke by a mentor that would change the angle this young emerging artist would see the world. And we revel in his open-hearted presence and delivery, feeling his effervescence and his shame as he climbs about, taking us on journeys that register and roll.

The one-person telling really takes shape, thanks to some spectacularly well-choreographed projections from UK’s Limbic Cinema (2023’s Glastonbury Festival), and their designers: Barrett Hodgson & Thom Buttery, assisted by the detailed sound design by Adrian Bent (‘SNOLPS‘). It’s cleverly playful and authentic, mixing poetic storytelling with tenderly told experiences growing up in his mixed-race hybrid family, with a mentally ill father and an overly protective caring mother, with a few grandparents thrown in for good measure. We watch the smile of this retail salesman fade from anger and shame as he climbs through his memories to talk to his mother and more, letting petals fall to the sound of Italian music. He is “killing it” throughout, as he says, even when he becomes the “robber of ignorant bliss“. Or is it “blissfully ignorant“? Such things can’t be helped sometimes when the power of words spoken from the heart is truly heard by the ones who may need to hear them in poetic delivery.

Through his signature deft wordplay, the show, As I Must Live It, is an invitation to move forward, to hear a truth that needs to be told, by a performer with clarity and vision. It moves around the playground of his youth with purpose, maybe more so, and with more structural awareness than Guilt (A Love Story). But both shine light on realms and arenas that need to be seen and truly felt, from the ground up, and it doesn’t hurt at all to be in the presence of these wonderful storytellers determined for us to see what is hidden and not talked about.