Playwright and performer Carolyn Fe’s taut script examines how technology can deepen, rather than ease, social isolation.
In Aye Caesar, Fe uses naturalistic dialogue to explore the uneasy relationship between digital convenience and human connection. The play becomes a stern warning about this uneasy relationship between these two forms of connection.
The intimacy of Toronto’s Red Sandcastle Theatre suits the production. It places the audience close to a story that begins as a lightly comic account of online shopping before moving into more unsettling territory. The play addresses elder isolation, technology and grief without losing sight of its central character’s need for connection.
Wearing a nightgown, Fe plays Brenda, an older widow who enters her cramped sitting room in the early morning and begins shopping online. It’s not made clear if Brenda can’t sleep or is a night owl. It doesn’t matter. A customer representative, played by April Leung, assists her. Their repeated conversations create a sense of familiarity and trust that the play gradually and dangerously calls into question.
Further plot details are best left undisclosed, as the production’s final turn depends on a gradual accumulation of unease.
Tanisha Taitt’s set presents Brenda’s sitting room as compact and tight with several accumulated objects suggesting a life built over many years. Brenda’s workstation and iPad occupy the centre, while a tall black stool at far stage left establishes a separate playing area for Leung’s online representative.
The early humour gives way to a more direct consideration of loneliness among older adults. In her programme note, Fe cites the prevalence of loneliness among Canadians aged 65 and older, with senior women reporting it more often than senior men. The production translates that concern into a personal rather than statistical drama.
Fe’s script is most effective when it lets that social concern emerge through Brenda’s behaviour and relationships rather than explicit explanation.
Fe is also a fine storyteller. Aye Caesar is proof of that.
As both playwright and performer, Fe gives the production a clear point of view, although the play’s strongest moments remain those in which its implications are left for the audience to assess. With courage, bravery, and fortitude, she sets out to address this concerning social issue of seniors and technology through storytelling, which becomes a vital conduit.
Under Taitt’s compassionate direction, Fe nicely avoids reducing Brenda to a caricature. Her performance moves from kindly eccentricity and vulnerability to a sharper, more resistant presence as the situation changes. Leung gives the customer representative a controlled, personable manner; the performance becomes increasingly disquieting as that professional composure persists after the nature of the encounter becomes clear. The audience’s uneasy laughter and audible reactions underscore the scene’s possible proximity to familiar online interactions.
The programme notes by Taitt and Fe reinforce the production’s interest in the need for recognition and connection. Onstage, these two themes are clearest in the contrast between Brenda’s desire to be acknowledged and the impersonal systems through which she seeks contact. The collaboration between writer-performer and director gives the production a consistent tone, balancing empathy for Brenda with the story’s darker implications.
Aye Caesar is a focused, timely production whose restrained staging and committed performances lend weight to its examination of isolation and technological dependence.
Please see it, as it is an important play.
Running time: approximately 80 minutes with no intermission
The production runs until October 4 at the Red Sandcastle Theatre, 922 Queen Street East, Toronto. For tickets: www.eldritchtheatre.ca
STAKES AND EMBERS, CAROLYN FE PRODUCTIONS with ELDRITCH THEATRE present
Aye Caesar by Carolyn Fe
Directed and Set Design by Tanisha Taitt
Lighting and Sound Designer: Christopher Elizabeth
Stage Manager: Frank/ie
Performers: Carolyn Fe and April Leung
