A perfect blend of comedy and horror, cicadas leaves you laughing, guessing, tensing and thinking at every turn.
The real estate market is tough and not just now but in 2032 when our story in cicadas takes place. Tough enough that our protagonist couple Janie (Monica Dottor) and Trim (Ryan Hollyman) end up picking a house on the condition their real estate agent (played Ellora Patnaik who plays the other characters in the show) warns they never enter the basement. Sure, a red flag, but in this economy, mehhh I’d still take it. What follows is a tense horror that spans mysterious disappearances, the philosophy and application of math, haunted house classics, mental health, and environmental disasters. This co-production by Tarragon Theatre and National Arts Centre in association with Fu-Gen Asian Canadian Theatre manages to balance all these elements in an effective horror filled with suspense and laugh-out-loud comedic dialogue which is brilliantly timed and delivered by our three leads.
When doing environmental horror such as haunted houses, it is all about how the environment lives and moves. Because it is not an entity haunting a place, the place is the entity. To that, flowers must be given to Set and Costume Designer Jawon Kang, assistant designer MinGyeong Lee, Sound Designer John Gzowski, assistant designer Julian Smith, Lighting Designer Michelle Ramsay, and assistant designer Tushar Dalvi. These teams made that house both scary and beautiful. It lives and breathes and moves with what message it is trying to convey to our couple and the audience. It is both a genuine threat and beautiful mystery waiting to be solved.
Creators David Yee & Chris Thornborrow and director Nina Lee Aquino do a great job of populating this horror house with a story that offers up so much and balances it all with a healthy dose of mystery that left this critic still theorizing days later. Elements of math philosophy, memory, nature, chaos, the fundamental need to quantify and calculate everything, environmental readings, and good old heaping of “oh my god what is even the point of having insurance!?” ’cause truly capitalism is the greatest horror of all. These plot points are treated with such care and balance that there is so much to chew on in this story. And that’s including of course the horror element that runs throughout the piece. Like a well orchestrated piece of music, this story hums along and leaves a lot to enjoy experiencing.
And if the story is music, then our three leads are the musicians that keep it all sounding great. Hollyman and Dottor have such natural and quick rapport with each other, balancing comebacks, teasing, and bites with slow moments of genuine love and support. It is how they switch between rapid back and forth to just quiet moments of togetherness in moments of love and suffering that make them such a joy to watch. Patnaik is also a performer of many talents as she takes on the multitude of other roles including Janie’s mother. Each character is fully fleshed out and distinct enough that it feels like an endurance test Patnaik passes with flying colors.
Enjoy the mystery and embrace the horror and comedy ’cause CICADAS is a hot house on the theatre market!