Since its inception in 2018, Coffee Champagne Oysters (COC) has offered guests more than what the name suggests. The small Parisian style champagne bar doubles as a speakeasy, with a lower restaurant and cocktail bar, À Toi, accessible only via a hidden entrance in the champagne room.
On a regular night, guests can dine in the À Toe from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. and escape into a 1920s-inspired world, outfitted with actors performing characters of the time. If guests conduct themselves right, secret rooms may reveal themselves and introduce potential experiences like tarot, illusionists, magicians, cabaret and burlesque. All you need to do is speak to a lady with a top hat.
Now, if you visit on a Sunday evening, you’ll find yourself even more immersed in the whimsy of the speakeasy, as you watch the woman in the top hat navigate her love life through an immersive narrative in which guests follow characters around as silent observers. The production, titled Sweet Sorrow, is a weekly ongoing show inspired by the immersive New York City production Sleep No More, which ended its iconic run in January after 12 years.
Those who were a fan of the critically acclaimed production can now look forward to experiencing a version original to Toronto, led by director and physical theatre artist Hannah-Rae Sabyan.
The script builds out a Romeo and Juliet-style narrative, centred around fictional characters that COC has honoured for years — husband and wife Isabelle and Antoine Mercier, who have moved to Toronto to open the esteemed Mercier Hotel. Sweet Sorrow takes place at the grand opening of the establishment, to which guests are invited for an exclusive gathering in À Toi to celebrate the Mercier’s success.
“With no words to guide them, you must rely on whispers of movement, flickers of candlelight, and the weight of a lover’s touch to uncover the secrets that bind the living to the dead,” says the event listing.
There are two shows every Sunday night, one at 6:30 p.m. and one at 8:30 p.m., running for approximately an hour. You can book a reservation at the upstairs champagne bar as early as 5 p.m., so you can arrive early and enjoy bubbles and bites before stepping out of reality into the surreal world of the speakeasy (in a masquerade mask no less).
Guests are asked to refrain from speaking and follow a set of rules in compliance with the production, including keeping the mask on at all times. Once inside, you may wander freely, examining the set for clues like letters and old photos, and observing the actors up close.
Each character performs a different part of the narrative, which only culminates at certain points, so it’s in your best interest to split up from your friends to gather the most clues. You can follow one person the entire time, or stray from scene to scene with your curiosity as your guide.
Ultimately the big moments are hard to miss, as drama unfolds in front of your eyes, so you don’t need to worry about missing anything fundamental. Once the show ends, guests are guided out of the cellar where they can reconvene in the champagne bar and share observations to piece together the plot.
“It’s pretty fragmented, which is sometimes a blessing and a curse,” says Sabyan. “But it does allow people to really choose what they experience, which I think is quite fun. That’s what I enjoyed about experiencing Sleep No More. Personally, I like being lost in it all.”
After training as a drama specialist at UofT, Sabyan spent two and a half years studying physical theatre at École internationale de théâtre Jacques Lecoq in Paris, France, where she learned the artistry of mime, clown, movement and experimental scenography.
She hasn’t stopped working ever since returning to Toronto, elevating the city’s art scenes with a flair of performance — whether that’s modelling for Fashion Art Toronto, dancing burlesque at your favourite bar, improvising an alien secretary costume to distribute drink tickets at an event or directing a production.
“Right now, I’ve shifted into more immersive, experiential, whimsical kinds of experiences,” she says, and that’s exactly what she brings to COC. She first began working with the champagne bar to boost the sense of play in the space, including her own cabaret burlesque performance (one of the secret shows that happens in À Toi). The owners then asked her to help produce something even more complex.
As it happens, co-owner Sanjay Singhal is a big fan of Sleep No More, so he and Sabyan traveled to New York last fall to see two renditions of the show, after which Sabyan spoke with the cast, one of whom was an alumni from her theatre program and encouraged her to play around with the concept.
Back in Toronto, the COC team wrote the Sweet Sorrow script, and Sabyan came in to host auditions and physician theatre workshops to build out the narrative. “I really like my actors to feel like they have a hand in the production,” she says, explaining that they have regular script meetings to adapt and improve the production together.
They launched weekly productions of Sweet Sorrow earlier this year, running now through the end of the year, “and hopefully indefinitely,” says Sabyan. “It’s the same thing with Sleep No More because the idea is that it’s something that is constantly there for people to engage with. Maybe it’s a Sunday and you need something to do, easy, go see Sweet Sorrow. Or maybe you have friends in town and want to entertain them, take them to a really cool experience.”
You can purchase tickets for the Sunday shows on Eventbrite, starting at $67 for general admission.
