Carolyn Fe in Aye Caesar | Photo by Mathieu Taillardas
Aye Caesar, Carolyn Fe’s playwriting debut (presented here in partnership with Stakes & Embers and Eldtrich Theatre), is a sincere, quietly affecting meditation on aging, loneliness, and modern technology. Of its many astonishing achievements, I’d like to emphasize the remarkable confidence she and director Tanisha Taitt have in the audience’s capacity to sit with a deceptively mundane scenario and recognize its understated significance.
For most of its 80-minute runtime, we’re watching, in drawn out detail, an elderly woman do some online shopping—and, without resorting to contrived circumstances, Fe makes it deeply authentic and compelling, both in her writing and performance. Brenda is a such a joy to behold as she waddles her way around the apartment and awkwardly engages with her tablet. She isn’t fully alone—she is quickly joined by April Leung, off to the side, representing Aye Caesar, her digital shopping assistant.
As Brenda shops for a fountain pen and associated stationary, she develops a relationship with Aye. Leung does a very fine job of conveying the boundless patience and encouragement of AI assistance, capturing the tell-tale automation betrayed in the stilted insertion of product details into faux-casual banter. A lot of the play’s humour is concerned with the commercial intentions behind Aye’s seemingly affectionate interactions with Brenda. It’s apparent to her and the audience that Aye’s engagement is ultimately mercantile, but we, like her, still get caught up in the fanciful illusion of genuine electronic friendship.
Carolyn Fe & April Leung in Aye Caesar | Photos by Mathieu Taillardas
With impeccable pacing, Fe reveals details of Brenda’s history with her deceased husband of 50 years and her need to scrapbook the fragments of her life and write their story—the pens and notebooks she’s buying being for this very purpose. As memories slip around and overwhelm her, her grip on reality deteriorates, and things take a dark turn. Fe’s rendering of the honest and abject spectacle that follows is heart-wrenching.
The Red Sandcastle Theatre is an ideal venue for such an intimate piece, properly nestling the audience within Brenda’s very small and isolated world. The domestic details of Taitt’s set design—wall art, lamp, sofa, a hung cardigan—conspire to give a sense of her life. Christopher-Elizabeth’s sound and lighting effectively evoke the technology Brenda is interfacing with without disrupting the naturalistic vibes. The green hue around Leung and the glitchy, synthetic shifts in light are masterfully integrated.
Though it was the inspiration for this play, I’m not sure directly quoting Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robitics is the best epilogue. Given how the finale plays out, these tenets are relevant, though they could have been integrated into the dialogue in the same way Fe has set-up and paid-off so many other motifs—inviting us to find, for ourselves, the patterns and their significance.
My guard was up from the beginning, especially when Brenda’s credit card is requested, and I was bracing myself for Aye to reveal predatory intentions, and was quite surprised by the narrative’s rather optimistic attitude towards commercial technology. I’m unsure, however, that inducing the warm fuzzies regarding that tech is the most cogent kicker here.
Fe’s deeply heartfelt and troubling story, you see, hits on this basic truth: Despite being designed to appeal to and take advantage of our human impulses, technology is not actually equipped to handle us at our most raw, vulnerable and chaotic. It does not have our best interests at heart, though Fe’s depiction of Aye does suggest it could. While I have cynical misgivings about a final act of unprompted kindness, I do understand the urge to embrace and humanize this increasingly intrusive feature of our lives. Fe does, albeit briefly, acknowledge the creep factor. I think this menacing aspect could be better developed. Ultimately, though, she offers a very moving glimpse at one aging woman’s experience of the modern world.
Aye Caesar
September 26 to October 4, 2026
Red Sandcastle Theatre
(922 Queen St E)
80 minutes
Carolyn Fe & April Leung in Aye Caesar | Photo by Mathieu Taillardas