These two new plays in Toronto are terrifying (and brilliant) in their own ways | Canada Voices

Plays aren’t often scary. Spooky? Yes. Thought-provoking? Hopefully, yes. A little unsettling? Sure.

But it’s rare that a piece of theatre is so downright scary that it jolts you from your seat in the same way a horror film might.

In Toronto, two new plays are interrogating what it means to frighten an audience. The Veil, written by Keith Barker and Thomas Morgan Jones, pulls out all the scenographical stops to create an atmosphere in which anything could happen: A light could flicker, threatening to plunge Crow’s Theatre’s teeny studio space into darkness. A prop could move all on its own. The play is gripping, devastating and, yes, terrifying.

Chelsea Woolley’s Enormity, Girl, and the Earthquake in Her Lungs, on the other hand, is less overt in its dare to scare. A feminist deep dive into mental health and parental abuse, the poetic, lyrical ensemble piece brings a quiet air of dread and recognition to the intimate performance space at the Nancy & Ed Jackman Performance Centre. Woolley’s script is sumptuous and complicated, a map of a mind shattered by grief. Its chills come not from jump-scares, but from a chorus of ever-present ghosts.

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In a lot of ways, these plays couldn’t be more different – one is a solo storytelling show, the other a physical theatre piece that only intermittently deals in naturalism – but there’s a surprising amount of overlap between them. Both explore rifts between dads and daughters, and both ask their audiences to bear witness to a story that might be difficult to hear.

But most importantly, both are outstanding small works that make smart use of their cozy performance spaces. They’re well written, well conceived for the stage and end with remarkably similar questions: What would you do to save the people you love (or even yourself)? How does the past inform the present? What duty do we have to be honest with ourselves – even when that’s a gargantuan task?

We meet The Veil’s unnamed narrator (played by the skillful Byron Abalos) when he crash-lands into the theatre. His tie’s a little askew; a tiny bead of sweat rests on his brow. He’s going through it, he tells us.

Soon enough, we learn what’s up: This man is cursed. No, really. He made a Faustian bargain with the devil – well, no, his boss at his law firm – and as it turns out, the trade-off for making partner is the curse.

It’s best to go into The Veil knowing as little as possible – to let the writing and Helen Juvonen’s efficient direction steer you as the play sees fit. Abalos never signals what’s coming next for our unnamed hero, and as such, for the first 20 minutes or so, The Veil might feel a little dull, a little clichéd. “Who cares about this lawyer and his privileged problems?,” you might find yourself asking.

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But something happens around that 20-minute mark that makes it clear that Juvonen’s production has a few tricks up its sleeve. The Veil, a collaboration between Thought For Food Productions, Crow’s Theatre and Guild Festival Theatre, asks audiences to engage each of their senses – to notice smells in the air, to clock nearly-imperceptible beeps and buzzes. Most horror films have tedious starts, plied with expositional details that don’t pay off till the last possible boo; The Veil pays homage to that tradition of storytelling while also smartly situating itself in the world of live theatre.

If I have any qualm with The Veil, it’s that the production’s not pegged to Halloween – the show’s scheduled to close on Oct. 12. But that missed opportunity aside, the play is sharp, shocking and relentlessly eerie, an invigorating jump-start to #spookyszn in Toronto’s east end.

Enormity, Girl, and the Earthquake in Her Lungs sows seeds of terror in subtler ways. When we meet Vic (an astonishing Vivien Endicott-Douglas), she’s in the throes of checking into a domestic violence shelter. “Are you okay?,” she asks herself on loop, the words flopping like a fish in her mouth.

The answer to that is complicated: No, she’s not, but yes, she might be, because she’s here, with access to care and a team of professionals who can help her. But the doctors, nurses and therapists stand on the other side of a closed door. If Vic opens it, she’ll be admitting the thing she’s been running from since childhood: that her parents have been deeply, persistently abusive to her, and that she deserves a kinder, happier future.

Woolley’s examination of trauma is gentle and even-tempered, with surprising moments of levity and warmth that keep the piece from feeling like a requiem or dirge. A sturdy ensemble (Marta Armstrong, Liz Der, Philippa Domville, Noa Furlong, Bria McLaughlin, Sofía Rodríguez and Emerjade Simms) brings Vic’s inner psyche and outermost fears to life with impressive stamina and poise.

Andrea Donaldson’s production is spare, precise and fierce, a celebration of girlhood and a condemnation of the adults intent on destroying it. Domville occasionally morphs into Vic’s mother, and the temperature in the room shifts each time – her words are daggers dipped in honey, sweet to the ear but lethal to the heart, and Domville is formidable in the role.

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As in 2023’s Paint Me This House of Love, Woolley flexes a masterful writing style that blends expository prose with more elegant poetry; her use of culinary metaphor in particular is exquisite. Paint Me This House of Love used orange taffy to make its points about parents and kids; Enormity uses saffron bisque. Evocative, satisfying stuff.

When the play gives way to naturalism in the form of a short, painful monologue for Vic, it’s as if the world stops spinning on its axis for a moment, still and silent and awful. Vic is a tough role, in a play reminiscent of Sarah Kane’s ambiguous Crave, and in this moment Endicott-Douglas grounds the work in a real, bleeding place of loss and despair.

Enormity, Girl, and the Earthquake in Her Lungs, produced here by Nightwood Theatre in association with Tarragon, could use a less clunky title. But like The Veil, it’s a bracing piece of theatre that asks its director to think creatively about the work at hand, and to consider how the presence of an audience might heighten (or complicate) the story being told.

These plays are scary in their own ways – one is a bona fide thriller, the other a less literal vessel for fear of the unknown – but together, they form a frighteningly strong diptych of new dramatic writing on opposite ends of the city of Toronto.