For many theatre-goers, nothing invokes fear like the threat of audience participation — the sweat-inducing possibility of being asked to improvise, the ominous prospect of revealing something too personal. In This Is the Story of the Child Ruled by Fear, participants outnumber performers seven to one, but there’s nothing to worry about. Pre-written lines appear in carefully highlighted binders, and reading is optional. Before the show begins, you can join the majority of the crowd in the audience, or brave involvement and choose a seat at one of the lamplit cabaret tables surrounding the stage.
Presented on tour at the Baby Grand by GrandOnstage and the City of Kingston Arts & Cultural Services Department, writer-performer David Gagnon Walker’s This Is the Story of the Child Ruled by Fear is a Strange Victory Performance production directed by Christian Barry and Judy Wensel. At times poetic, often entertaining, and occasionally a little too self-involved, the show puts a mythical spin on anxiety, loneliness, and the precarity of the present.
Once the readers take their seats, out comes Walker, wearing an upside-down bucket on his head and delivering a prologue that foreshadows the play’s eccentric storytelling, as well as its themes of ecological strife. Tori Morrison’s sound design helps to set the tone, blending folky music and blustery, transportive audio effects.
Eventually, the bucket comes off, Walker sits down at a desk onstage, and we get a quick rundown of how the show will proceed. Each self-selected reader will perform one or two roles in addition to taking turns voicing the titular Child — a supine figurine in a turtleneck sweater with an irrepressibly sympathetic koala face — whose plaintive, high-pitched tone Walker has the audience practice together with the readers. Safe in our seats, the rest of us are invited to act as the chorus, reciting lines projected on a screen above the stage.
In this cosy setting, Walker narrates a whimsical fable about a child who is born terrified and alone. A webcam on Walker’s desk provides a live video feed of the tiny Child figurine, and the screen above him comes to life through a compelling blend of prerecorded digital and stop-motion animations (video design by Morrison), peppered with physical backdrops built up on the desk (physical design by Morgan Melenka). Those material elements — a cardboard city with little lights in the windows, a quaint living room backdrop à la Blue’s Clues, a family of paper-towel rolls with googly eyes — create scenographic depth and contribute to the play’s storybook-like atmosphere.
Walker’s writing has a soothing, almost sleepy rhythm — as a chorus member, I was intrigued to feel my voice falling in line with, and sometimes resisting, the slow, collective pace and intonation of the group recitations. The theatre-within-a-theatre of the Child’s cardboard world is charming, and highlights one of the show’s strengths: how it finds humour in the absurd. Moving between fanciful world-building and personal reflection, Walker supplements the Child’s imaginative narrative with stories from his own life — of witnessing two catastrophic floods, of living with bouts of depression. Sometimes quirkier than it is poignant, the script tends to get lost under a mountain of metaphors, but the audio-visual elements and lighting (design by Barry and Morrison) keep the show on its intended emotional track.
Although Walker conceived and workshopped This Is the Story of the Child Ruled by Fear just prior to COVID-19 lockdown, it’s perhaps best understood and appreciated as a pandemic project. Its festival appearances began in 2021, at which time the “I’m alone in the world”-ness of it all must have felt cathartic, and reciting lines together in person would have been nothing short of a spiritual experience.
These days, I want participatory theatre to be collaborative, not just collective. Being in a room with people is a post-pandemic treat that my overcrowded 2025 self is too socially spoiled to appreciate. Likewise, the focus on isolation, which was front of mind for many in the wake of lockdowns, has lost some of its resonance. Despite addressing shared fears and griefs — even showing video footage of a flood devastating a city — the story takes on a solipsistic slant that leaves it a little lopsided.
In the face of devastation, This Is the Story of the Child Ruled By Fear closes its eyes and looks inward, and that doesn’t quite feel like enough. But the script is gentle and generous in its invitations, the design is nice, and that little koala face on the big screen is so endearing that it’s hard not to cheer for this tiny creature in a big, scary world.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
WRITTEN BY
Haley Sarfeld
Haley Sarfeld (she/they) has reviewed theatre for the Kingston Theatre Alliance, Kingston Whig-Standard, and Intermission Magazine. Her coverage of Theatre Kingston’s Fringe Festival in 2024 was recognized with a Nathan Cohen Award for Excellence in Critical Writing (Outstanding Emerging Critic). As a playwright and composer-lyricist, her work has been featured in the Shortwave Theatre Festival, Watershed Music Theatre Festival, and Kick & Push Festival. Haley loves word games and is a regular crossword puzzle contributor for The Skeleton Press.
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