The suspension of disbelief is a key concept in the theatre.
We accept that an actor onstage is someone whom they are not. We accept that a set isn’t merely flats of painted wood, but a portal into another world. For two hours or so, we accept a fantastical story to be reality. We accept all these things in the hope that, if the drama we’re watching is any good, we shall be richly rewarded by its end.
Two theatre productions at the ongoing 2025 Luminato Festival push this idea of suspended disbelief to its limits. They ask: how far are we are willing — or able — to go to buy into their conceits? Are we able to overcome a sense of disbelief so great that it feels like we’re stuck in a hurricane, with a vortex pulling us ever relentlessly into its eye? The answer: somewhat. And each to varying levels of success.
In his experimental play “An Oak Tree,” now running until Sunday at the St. Lawrence Centre for the Arts’ Jane Mallett Theatre, British artist Tim Crouch presents his audience with a tall order. By the end of his 80-minute show — and this is your spoiler alert if you’re planning to see it — he wants us to believe that a piano bench placed centre stage is not a piano bench, but rather an oak tree. Then he wants us not to see it as an oak tree, but rather as a girl who’s killed in a tragic car crash.
This two-hander is an act of theatrical manipulation. But it’s also a story about grief and its mind-altering effects.
Crouch plays the middle-aged man, a hypnotist, who accidentally kills the girl with his vehicle. Several months after the accident, he has a chance encounter with the victim’s bereaved father, who wants to be hypnotized to dull his grief.
The trick with Crouch’s work is that the role of the grieving father is portrayed each night by a different guest actor, who has neither seen nor read the play. At the performance I attended, it was “Law & Order Toronto” star Karen Robinson. (Others guests include Mark McKinney, Jean Yoon and Daniel MacIvor.)
Crouch is like a magician. But he shows his hand throughout the entirety of this meta-theatrical play, letting the audience in on the manipulation. We watch him feed his guest co-star their lines, whisper their stage directions, hand them their scripts.
He’s constantly conjuring a world before puncturing it. And all this, in effect, is destabilizing, making it even more difficult for his audience to suspend their disbelief. But that is, I think, the point of “An Oak Tree.”
When it works, as it may for some viewers who are able to buy into this conceit, I suspect the play’s sly ending must hit like a freight train. It left me cold, however. Billed as a hypnotic show, this is one that left me firmly rooted in reality.
Far more successful was Teatro La Plaza’s presentation of “Hamlet,” which ran last weekend at the Harbourfront Centre Theatre. This Spanish-language revival from Peru, staged with English captioning, tests our willingness to suspend our disbelief in a way that’s far different from “An Oak Tree.”
Whereas Crouch’s play raises our initial level of “disbelief” inherently, through its structure, “Hamlet” doesn’t need to do that. The disbelief we must overcome here is the baggage that we, as an audience, bring into the theatre with us. It’s our prejudices.
Teatro La Plaza’s production was presented by a company of actors with Down syndrome. In director Chela De Ferrari’s loose reimagining of Shakespeare’s classic tragedy, these eight performers each take turns to play a variety of roles, including the title character. (They all deserve special mention: Octavio Bernaza, Lucas Demarchi, Jaime Cruz, Alvaro Toledo, Ximena Rodríguez, Diana Gutiérrez, Manuel García and Cristina León Barandiarán.)
This revival challenges us to confront any preconceived biases — our disbeliefs — we may have about people with Down syndrome, what they’re capable of and, as actors, whom they can play. Why can’t they step into the shoes of Shakespeare’s greatest tragic hero? this production asked.
In one irreverent and humorous scene, Cruz stands in front of a large screen. Behind him is Laurence Olivier’s Hamlet. He tries to imitate him. But he can’t. Instead, he realizes that he can offer something different, if still equally important.
Indeed, this “Hamlet” was more existential than any I’ve seen before. Its famous “To be, or not to be” soliloquy, recited several times by various actors, cuts like a newly sharpened knife. After all: Who better to deliver this speech, about the inequalities and pains of life, than performers who themselves come from a community that’s historically been marginalized, shunned and devalued?
There is, however, much joy to this reinterpretation of “Hamlet,” too. And though this production ends with death, as in the original play, death here feels more symbolic than physical. It’s personified by Demarchi, who dances unencumbered around the stage with a ribbon. His character represents a liberation of sorts — of old thoughts, ideas and biases.
It also well represents this production as a whole. Teatro La Plaza’s “Hamlet” not only manages to suspend our disbelief; it relinquishes our disbeliefs for good.
The Luminato Festival continues until Sunday. See luminatofestival.com for information.
