REVIEW: Slice-of-life comedy fires on all cylinders

Theatre Burlington’s The Birds and the Bees does justice to a well-written script with strong acting, a great set, and clever sound design. 

As part of its “all-Canadian playbill,” Theatre Burlington has opened its season with playwright/actor Mark Crawford’s play The Birds and the Bees, which premiered at the Blyth Festival in 2016. Since then, it has been a popular choice for theatre companies across Canada, had its international debut in the United Kingdom in 2022, and premiered in the United States in 2023. The online magazine Ipswich24 has called it, “a laugh-out-loud comedy that proves sex can be funny without being smutty.”

It’s a slice-of-life story in which we find 30-something Sarah pumping up an air mattress in her mother Gail’s extra bedroom, having come to stay on the farm upon the breakup of her marriage. The now-guest bedroom was Sarah’s old room, and one thread of the storyline involves Sarah and Gail navigating their relationship as adult women having both weathered some big changes in their lives and to their romantic relationships. While Gail has become resigned to her long-time solo status, Sarah is struggling with the end of her marriage, a loss of identity, and the emotional fall-out from the inability to become a mother. These problems involve things, however, that are hard to discuss with your mother (mostly, SEX).

Buzzing in and out of the women’s orbit are Gail’s long-time acquaintance, farmer Earl, who rents part of her land and has had a long list of relationships which never last; and graduate student Ben, who cycles to the farm from town to study the inhabitants of Gail’s beehives as part of a study. The bees are dying, and Gail and Earl bicker over the causes and solutions to this state of affairs as their friendship … evolves. Meanwhile, Sarah invites the awkward but attractive Ben to the town’s last-ever Turkey Days celebration in an effort to ignore her troubles for one evening, and that drunken evening sets in motion unexpected and monumental changes to everyone’s lives.

Director Francesca Brugnano says she was drawn to the play not only for its humour and what it delivers in showing the nature of human relationships, but its overarching message of love and optimism as well: “In a world where the sea may be rising and the bees may be dying, uncertainty rules. But when things don’t go according to plan, you can always change, you can always learn, and you can always make a new plan.” Last season, Brugnano directed Village Theatre Waterdown’s Sequence, tonally a very different play about human nature and destiny, but one that also involved a script full of clever dialogue as well as a quartet of actors.

The cast is composed of Sarah (Heather Nutt), Gail (Julie Donoahue), Earl (Raymond Beauchemin), and Ben (Jeff Nguyen). After watching Donoahue in this play, as well as her performance earlier this year as the indomitable matriarch in Dundas Little Theatre’s production of Things I Know to Be True, one thing I know to be true is that when I see Donoahue’s name in the cast list, the audience is in for a treat. Donoahue is completely natural onstage, embodying her roles with great realism, authenticity, and timing.

Her castmates also bring their roles to life with authenticity and likability. Sarah, Earl, and Ben feel familiar and true-to-life. We probably know someone like each of the characters in our own lives. Sarah’s life is chaotic, tumbling from one crisis to another, but as we get to know her we increasingly root for her to be OK. That’s a testament to the emotional journey Nutt takes us on in her performance. Ben is an awkward fellow, and the character is the least fleshed out of the quartet. However, in the second half we begin to see glimpses of the man that Ben (Nguyen) is becoming, and that is someone who is steady, mature, adaptable, and thoughtful. And Earl? Beauchemin is a treat to watch, with a great sense of timing, physical comedy and, ultimately, a heart of gold. You can’t help but enjoy Earl’s antics, even when he’s pooh-poohing Gail’s serious concerns about the environment.

The set is very appealing, the stage divided into adjoining bedrooms and the bathroom of the upper floor of a farmhouse. It’s cleverly designed to reveal both a parallel and perpendicular hallway at centre stage, one leading to unseen stairs. The sound design is clever, punctuating the action with toilet flushes and the creaking of an unseen screen door below. What’s remarkable about the set design is how well it uses space and the absence of structures to allow the audience to see into multiple layers of the still very visually realized house. We watch interactions take place in the hallways which would normally be obscured by walls. Very impressive! Compliments to set designers Cataldo Brugnano and Michelle Spanik, sound designer Brian Nettleford, and all those who helped realize director Brugnano’s vision.

The Birds and the Bees’ author has penned a number of other plays, including Stag and Doe; Bed and Breakfast; Boys, Girls, and Other Mythological Creatures; The New Canadian Curling Club; Chase the Ace; The Gig; and The Golden Anniversaries. Crawford’s plays have been produced nationally as well as abroad, including the U.S., the U.K., Poland, Australia, and New Zealand. His website announces that his newest play, Ruby and the Reindeer, will premiere in December. Residing in Stratford, Crawford has been nominated for a Playwrights Guild of Canada Comedy Award and the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and has a list of acting credits to his name.

His script is well-written, with clever, funny, and true-to-life dialogue. It’s bawdy without being vulgar. The action is nicely paced, and the audience comes to genuinely care about the characters, as evidenced by the audible reactions when the story comes to a series of startling, emotionally-charged climaxes.

This is an enjoyable play that entertains and gifts its audience with a hopeful conclusion.

NEED TO KNOW

The Birds and the Bees
Continues Oct. 24, 25, 31 & Nov. 1, 8 p.m. with matinees on Oct. 25 & Nov. 1, 2 p.m.
Theatre Burlington
2311 New St., Burlington
Tickets: purchase online or contact the box office at boxoffice@theatreburlington.on.ca or (905) 639-7700
Run time: 2 hours with a 15 minute intermission