Istvan Dugalin ➤

Cast of Concord Floral | Photo by Allison MacKenzie

“A life without beauty is unbearable.”

While it wallows in the mundane minutia of teenage life and finds casual yet devastating cruelty there, Concord Floral is purposefully beautiful in its intentions and execution. I read Jordan Tannahill’s text for the first time just over a week ago and was immediately struck by its assured negotiation between the prosaic and profound. The confessions and musings are unguarded and whimsical. There is lyricism even in throwaway banter. For their inaugural production, Pucker’s Co. offers up an imaginative and richly textured rendering that makes evocative use of The Theatre Centre’s intimate BMO Incubator space. 

Originally developed by Tannahill, Erin Brubacher and Cara Spooner, in collaboration with a group of local teenagers, it was first presented by Why Not Theatre in 2014. Through a series of silly to sombre vignettes, we are invited into the sexual experiences, quirky interests and encroaching awareness of death of a bunch of suburban teens. Framed by this massive abandoned greenhouse, a communal sanctuary, the hormones and angst permeate their gloom as they unpack their shit, haunted by the memory of a nasty event.

Creepy calls from a lost phone. A dead body in a basement. A fox lamenting humanity’s arrogance. The decrepit greenhouse itself tells its own story. Each member of the ensemble (Arjun Kalra, Rachel Cucheron, Kole Durnford, Gillian Bennett, Micaela Janse van Rensburg, Chrystal Tam, Mya Wong, Trinity Lloyd, Meg Gibson and Clara Isgro) has their unique, persuasive rhythm and, as a whole, are fully in tune with each other. They sell even the surreality of sentient furniture with an aura of truth and familiarity.

Having caught his production of Ride the Cyclone just a few weeks before—another Canadian work about young people contemplating death and grappling with existence—I’m recognizing 郝邦宇 Steven Hao’s penchant for playful and poetic abstraction. While I wasn’t sold on the narrative effectiveness of his transforming the fortune-teller of Cyclone into a chorus; he’s landed more firmly here on a theatrically alienating device that disrupts and intensifies our experience. He’s split some characters up into voice-avatar hybrid representations; this varies the texture of their identities and prompts us to scrutinize their interactions, to reconcile layers of dissociation and vulnerability. 

Hao, co-director/choreographer Alli Carry and sound designer Kai Korven keep bodies in motion through a gestural language while disembodied voices (both pre-recorded and live via microphone) blend with naturally spoken dialogue to expand our experience of them. Irene Ly’s minimalist set, dangling tatters of fabric and foliage, suggest abandonment and encroaching earth. The torn plastic sheeting that separates the stage from the audience in the opening moments of the show establishes a sense of quarantine and seclusion. Peering through ripped holes in this plastic, we catch our first frustrating and intriguing little glimpses of the cast as they trace their strange trajectories. The most prominent fixture of Mathilda Kane’s lighting is a series of luminous bars that saturate the sunken space and contribute greatly to the eerie gestalt. 

This is stylish, introspective and kaleidoscopic mise en scène that builds an ominous, giddy and heartbreaking world where a red sweater is never just a red sweater. I’m especially fond of that prop’s deployment—a restrained, striking and versatile symbol of petty animosity, mortality and hope.

Concord Floral
October 8 to October 12, 2025
The Theatre Centre, BMO Incubator
(1115 Queen St. W)
75 minutes

Cast of Concord Floral | Photo by Allison MacKenzie