Review: CICADAS at Tarragon Theatre

I experienced my first cicada invasion in 2004.

The noisy bugs with beady orange eyes made a constant, almost deafening sound that seemed to give voice to the oppressive late May New Jersey heat. After fulfilling their reproductive purpose, their falling bodies littered the sidewalks, crunching wetly under an errant toe or wayward wheel. It was an experience I didn't want to repeat, but knew would eventually resurface; after all, cicadas, like much else in this world, come in cycles.

Chris Thornborrow and David Yee’s CICADAS, now at Tarragon Theatre in a co-production with NAC English Theatre in association with fu-GEN Asian Canadian Theatre Company, is a similarly overwhelming but much more pleasant experience, a compellingly scored, horror-thriller-comedy about a couple who buy a house in Trinity Bellwoods above the spot where long-buried creeks flow.

Janie (Monica Dottor) and Trim (Ryan Hollyman) are warned to avoid the basement—or, frankly, avoid buying the house at all—but let their excitement about their long-awaited child-to-be sweep them into a purchase of a place that seems to be haunted by the past. This includes memories of Janie’s deceased mathematics professor mother Adeline (Ellora Patnaik), who, with calculated precision similar to one of her equations, engineered the match between star student Trim and her daughter before taking her own life.

Nina Lee Aquino’s production offers genuine visual surprises and chills, and Thornborrow and Yee’s moody score is full of portentous ambiance, their entertaining script containing a fascinating premise and snappy dialogue. But, like a confluence of 13- and 17-year cicada broods, that promising premise falls prey to an excess of noise, comprised of shifting layers of metaphor at war with both each other and a clear purpose.

On the surface, the play seems to have an ecological message, buried creeks and urbanization leading to a climate change cautionary tale with catastrophic consequences reminiscent of Tarragon’s earthshaking 2024 presentation of El Terremoto. At the same time, it also aspires to be a National Treasure-esque code-based thriller—but also a sophisticated treatise that twins mathematical theory with family drama in the vein of Proof. There’s even a nod to Roald Dahl’s The Witches in a mysteriously changing painting that hints at the precariousness of memory.

On top of all this, the play’s titular metaphor gets supplanted by another animal partway through, bugs pushed aside by discussion of a worldview-defying deer.

The surfeit of ideas is alternately invigorating and confusing, as the tone shifts from satire to farce to apocalyptic horror and back again. It’s delightful to see a show so ambitious; yet, with the judicious excision of a few layers of symbolism, the play might have a stronger, more purposeful impact.

Thornborrow and Yee’s comedy is at its best when it’s sharply skewering Toronto life, including the capricious housing market, or looking at the sheer absurdity of a house that seems to have a mind of its own. Other bits of humour, like the cartoonish name of a tertiary character who’s visiting for exposition purposes, are silly for silly’s sake. They feel notably out of place in a story that quickly becomes rooted in grief, as the characters contemplate the potential loss of not only past and future, but even universal constants.

These characters, too, alternately display realistic and incongruous behaviour when the plot calls for it; as an example, while it’s not completely out of the realm of possibility that a contractor who grills an estate agent over every foot of the property would suddenly fail to read the purchase contract, the convenient personality shift may give audiences pause as they struggle to reconcile the characterization for a few minutes.

All that being said, the mystery is engrossing throughout, with Jawon Kang’s set design work, Michelle Ramsay’s lighting, and John Gzowski’s sound contributing a great deal to the eerie atmosphere. The house seems nearly alive, producing (suggested) water, growing vines, and snatching unsuspecting characters out of their complacent lives.

Dottor’s Janie and Hollyman’s Trim are full of life both figuratively and literally, with Patnaik’s flat affect and Adeline’s mysterious relationship to the rest of the plot making her harder to connect with. Patnaik’s deadpan delivery works better in satirical moments, with her turn as a young TikTok-pilled hippie doula named Flower and her foray into the occult being social media-worthy.

CICADAS is a puzzle, both in its content and in its construction, which may cause some brooding—though, hopefully, not Brood X. Puzzling out both intriguing mysteries is reason enough to see it, even if these locusts need more focus.

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