Brenda Robins infuses her character Ryan with just enough pathos for audiences to empathize with her.Kenya Parsa/Crow's theatre
- Title: The Christmas Market
- Written by: Kanika Ambrose
- Directed by: Philip Akin
- Performed by: Brenda Robins, Matthew G. Brown, Savion Roach, Danté Prince
- Company: b current Performing Arts, in association with Crow’s Theatre and Studio 180 Theatre
- Venue: Crow’s Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: Runs until Dec. 7
Critic’s Pick
There’s no shortage of feel-good Christmas plays in Toronto at this time of year, from Hallmark spoofs to holiday pantomimes to, yes, The Sound of Music.
But what about a feel-bad Christmas play?
The Christmas Market, written by Kanika Ambrose and directed in its world premiere by Philip Akin, is just that. A brutal exploration of life as a temporary foreign worker at a farm stand in Ontario, the piece is jagged, haunting and terribly, relentlessly sad.
But it’s also one of the best new plays of the year.
The Christmas Market trods familiar ground for Ambrose, who in her previous work has explored Canada’s broken immigration systems and the nuances of Black diasporas at length. Our Place, about the employees of a jerk chicken restaurant in Scarborough, was one of the strongest new works of 2022; the same was true of 2024’s Truth, a play for young audiences about life on a Virginian plantation.
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The Christmas Market shows off artistic impulses from Ambrose we’ve seen before – the story is painful but without one villain to absorb the blame for that suffering – but the piece is tighter and more confident than much of her earlier writing. At 90 minutes long, it‘s taut and unindulgent, with the kind of ambiguous ending that few playwrights are able to crack. In Ambrose’s hands, those final moments are dissatisfying, but masterfully so – think the spinning top from Inception, or the mid-Don’t Stop Believing blackout from The Sopranos.
When we meet Joe (Matthew G. Brown), Roy (Savion Roach) and Lionel (Danté Prince), three migrant workers living on a farm somewhere outside Toronto, we can tell immediately that something’s not right. The men sleep on industrial shelves turned into makeshift bunk beds; their clothes are dirty and thin, unfit for an Ontario winter. (Ken Mackenzie’s set and Des’ree Gray’s costumes are extraordinarily thoughtful.)
But all’s not lost: It’s the week before Christmas, and Joe is determined to turn the shoddy trailer into a cozy sanctuary from the cold. He’s grateful for the back-breaking farm work, or so he says: He’s building a house back home, and each winter he spends in Canada is a new step toward financial freedom down south.
In the spirit of Christmas, Joe decides to go all-out, Caribbean style: He drafts a grocery list for Ryan (Brenda Robins), the white supervisor in charge of the farm’s foreign workers. She wonders aloud where she’s going to find all these things – what is black cake, anyway? – and asks whether the men might not be happier with the free turkey she could get from her church. Her willingness to help, it seems, might have an upper limit.
Savion Roach is perhaps the most convincing he has ever been onstage.Kenya Parsa/Crow's theatre
As Joe prepares for his gathering – complete with a viewing of The Sound of Music and lots of rum-soaked fruitcake – we get to know Lionel and Roy, who have problems of their own. Roy’s staring down the barrel of an expensive paternity battle; Lionel’s at odds with the farm’s owner, who’s caught wind of his plans to expose the terrible working conditions.
You don’t need The Christmas Market to tell you how hard it is to be a temporary foreign worker in this country. The signs are seemingly everywhere, from the shared basement apartments leased for astronomical rents to the entry-level grocery store jobs with lines of applicants that snake around the block.
The Christmas Market doesn’t shy away from those realities, but it doesn’t dwell on trauma porn, either. Instead, Ambrose uses the TFW program as a backdrop to explore the fascinating relationships between the men on the farm and, indeed, between the men and their supervisor. Joe seems to have a particular soft spot for Ryan, which more than once becomes a liability as he attempts to keep the peace in his trailer.
Akin’s cast only elevates Ambrose’s firecracker of a script: Brown’s performance in particular aches with compassion. We’ve all been that person at a fraught family gathering, trying our best to keep tempers from boiling over as we straighten table settings and stir gravy. Joe is all of us, tired and homesick, tenacious in his attempts to make this Christmas a celebration worth remembering.
Roach, as well, is excellent, perhaps the most convincing he’s ever been onstage. Prince, meanwhile, has the tricky job of balancing Lionel’s surface-level rage with something softer, less prickly. In fleeting, wrenching moments, he does that and then some. Not knowing what happens to him at the end of the play is one of Ambrose’s crueller flourishes of mythmaking, but it’s deeply effective.
In a sea of frothy holiday properties, The Christmas Market adds an overdue injection of depth to decking the halls.Kenya Parsa/Crow's theatre
Robins has perhaps the hardest task on the teeny Studio Theatre stage. As mentioned, there are no villains in this world, even when it seems that Ryan is something akin to evil. Robins infuses late-bloomer Ryan with just enough pathos for audiences to empathize with her, even when she’s acting out of prejudice and spite. By the play’s denouement, you almost want to root for her – almost.
In the end, The Christmas Market is not a PSA for Canada’s underclass of foreign workers. It’s not an eat-your-vegetables play and, in a lot of ways, it’s not even a tragedy: Ambrose’s writing and Akin’s unfussy direction are often hilarious, and even joyful. A tiny nutcracker nestled between the shelves-turned-beds is a lovely visual nod to the Christmas traditions that transcend borders, languages and generations.
But that’s great writing for you: work that eschews genre and other boxes in pursuit of grounded, truthful storytelling. Don’t be surprised if The Christmas Market is someday adapted for film or TV. In a sea of frothy holiday properties, Ambrose’s latest critique of Canada, its systems and the people who run them adds an overdue injection of depth to decking the halls.