Toronto Fringe Review: Justin Hay delivers a beautifully crafted solo performance where Shakespeare becomes the language of grief, memory, and survival
By Ross
Here is one of the unexpected pleasures of spending several days at the Toronto Fringe Festival. Without realizing it, I discovered a production that quietly crept in and changed the rhythm of my day. Settling into Soulpepper‘s intimate Garland Cabaret for My Own Private Shakespeare, I certainly wasn’t expecting such an emotionally resonant evening, yet, in a blink of an eye, writer and performer Justin Hay (Three Ships Collective’s A Christmas Carol) opened up an elegant and deeply personal solo play where Shakespeare’s most familiar words suddenly felt as though they had been written specifically for this moment alone.
The story begins with startling simplicity. Thunder rolls through the theatre as rain crashes down. A man receives a phone call during one of life’s most private moments. It’s from his sister, and she has news. His father has died. What follows is not simply a meditation on grief, but an honest reckoning with a father who was both larger than life and deeply damaging.
Working with director Mona Zaidi (Soho House TO’s The Telltale Heart), Hay digs into one personal crisis after another. “They come in threes,” we are told, and his trio of traumas arrives, first, with his father’s death, then the collapse of his marriage and a frightening medical diagnosis that, each on its own, would have unmoored the strongest of lead characters. Hay moves effortlessly between his own memories and passages from Hamlet, King Lear, Othello, and Macbeth. It never feels like he is performing Shakespeare as literature. Instead, each speech grows naturally from lived experience, allowing words we think we know so well to land with startling authenticity and emotional clarity.
The performance is powerfully controlled, never reaching for easy sentiment or high theatricality. Hay finds natural connections between Shakespeare’s language and his own life, making passages from King Lear or Hamlet feel less quoted than remembered. He tells his story with confidence, trusting both the language and his audience completely. Zaidi’s thoughtful direction gives every transition between autobiography and verse an effortless flow, and the simple staging, anchored by a throne-like chair, becomes an emotional landscape rather than merely a piece of scenery. The rain, thunder, and layered soundscape reinforce the emotional weather passing through Hay’s memories, although one recurring water effect occasionally draws more attention to itself than the storytelling requires. Fortunately, Hay’s storytelling always pulls our focus back where it belongs.
My Own Private Shakespeare explores life’s impossible contradictions through some of Shakespeare’s most enduring characters in hopes of understanding our complex responses and emotional trauma. Hay never suggests that Shakespeare offers easy answers. Instead, he quietly reveals how these centuries-old plays can give shape to grief, abuse, forgiveness, and the complicated love that can survive even the most painful family histories. By the time he steps away from the stage, Shakespeare’s words no longer feel like monuments to be admired. They have become the language one son needed to finally tell his own story.
