“I Don’t Even Miss You” Bravely and Comically Destroys Our Dance-Break Hearts at Factory Theatre, Toronto – front mezz junkies, Theater News

The Toronto Theatre Review: Tiny Bear Jaws’ I Don’t Even Miss You

By Ross

They give us a nervous wave into the darkness of Tiny Bear Jaws Productions and Factory Theatre‘s I Don’t Even Miss You, written and performed most magnificently by Elena Belyea (Smoke). This dystopian pop “solo” show magically creates an instantaneous connection to its lone character, brought on and delivered fantastically by the clever Belyea to engage us in their pseudo-autobiographical musical legacy creation set out before us. They ask their pseudo-gendered cohort, her A.I. collaborator and virtual assistant, “Orchid” who hangs around on the screen behind them, to play the song “Tonight“, and after a swell of synthesized music, our dynamic fearless guide, the non-binary computer programmer Basil Harris, dives deep into the song with all their ’90s heart and soul. Or at least it feels like something from the ’90s, effervescently choreographed by Gianna Vacirca (Factory’s BEARS), that ignites the space with a special kind of energetic abandonment that can’t be denied. It doesn’t last long, though. They pause, distracted by our captivated viewing, and after a moment to regroup, they nervously restart the program with the help, once again, of the obliging “Orchid“. 

“That’s me“, Basil explains, “despite all we’ve been through“, and we start to see the space differently as the chapters of their life spirit out and spin forward and back, projected with care by sound and video designer Tori Morrison (OTM’s R.A.V.E.). The unpacked puzzle pieces start to paint an inner landscape, coming together quite brilliantly as the mouthing of lyrics and the captivating storytelling deliver forth a moment of clarity and concern. Something has happened to everyone in the world, and Basil must spend the next few years trying to detach and re-attach themselves to their new solitary reality using all the gifts they were generously given.

Directed with a wise and wild vision by Emma Tibaldo (Talisman’s That Woman) and aided by some deliciously energetic and catchy music by Morrison and Belyea, the I Don’t Even Miss You unwrapping makes its way through a possible humanity rapturing when all the inhabitants in the world disappear, except for this one lone soul who we start to care for more and more with each reveal. A few worst-day scenarios are drenched in adventurous solitude, rummaging through grocery stores and wine fridges for food and mind-numbing escape, binging and drinking themselves into oblivion. There’s a lesbian miracle described and a dog named Radish that crawls into the story to expand our collective heart and draw us in deeper. In an instant, we are there, breathing and singing with Basil and the deep stark aloneness that engulfs the space, quite authentically, making it almost impossible not to feel their desperation and understand their tuned-in and tuned-out loneliness.

After months of musical preparation, Basil stands before us, ready to deliver their epilogue on Day 987, with incomplete sentences leaving us hanging on Basil’s every thought and word, but there is a shift. I Don’t Even Miss You creates a unique rhythm and Robyn-esque energy that doesn’t disappoint nor lets us wander. “I know you’re not…” “But it still feels…” Yet Basil doesn’t deliver the finality of the statement, nor expand on the impulse. It forces us to dig in and wonder what the finished sentence is truly made up of. It’s a clever, sharp, emotionally engaging game, that asks us to click our collective heels with them and wish to be spirited home where all is exactly the same as when we left it. And all of the world makes sense.

Yet, Basil doesn’t even admit we are there with them watching with enthusiastic love and care. In their eyes, we are all another one of their hallucinations, created out of their deep need and lonely desire for community. We don’t exist for them. And they prove it with an astounding turn of the lens. “In the absence of others, what is a self?” creator Belyea writes in the program. We turn that idea around in our head as Basil’s profound sense of aloneness takes them to the brink of falling, even with the technology that was created by them, for them, teasing out a caring tune that we all are connected, and that they are loved. But is that the real thing? Or even the same thing?

When Basil takes the last cookie bite, or when Basil’s companion vegetable metaphor, Radish, disappears, the sense of abandonment and loss is surprisingly powerful. Embodied by Belyea on a pretty simple but effective set designed by Even Gilchrist (Citadel’s The Sound of Music) with clever lighting by Whittyn Jason (Tarragon’s The Hooves Belong…), the impact is pure, honest, and heartbreaking. It takes us back to those long COVID days, weeks, and months of the pandemic, when we all wondered how life would be when the world turned back on, even though it had all changed so irrevocably.

I Don’t Even Miss You tries to be the type of experience that would say something like that; nonchalant and edgy, pushing away when the true desire is to pull one in close. We feel the internalized defense mechanisms spring up all around the growing and fading Basil, hoping that they will keep the turmoil of loneliness outside. But Orchid’s growing sense of maternal engagement overrides and shifts the formula forward, giving rise to a hint of exploration and the idea of hope. Which I must say, at this time in history, is the one true feeling we are in need of to the highest degree. I Don’t Even Miss You surprises us with its tender connectivity and honest emotionality, leaving us humming a catchy tune, while also believing that we’ve been seen and thought of in the most masterful of ways. And that we’ve been given some quality of hope to continue on, for at least the foreseeable future.