Goooood evening, blog!

Last Friday, I was invited (!!) to see Shifting Ground Collective’s production of the musical Ordinary Days at the Pia Bouman Studio Theatre. Thank you so much to the team for reaching out! Please keep inviting me to things. It feeds my ever-wavering ego.

Shifting Ground Collective is a new theatre company in Toronto that aims to spotlight young/emerging artists. I love supporting up-and-coming theatre companies – you could be watching a future star! I also really respect self-produced plays. It can be terribly hard to get cast in shows, and if you’re willing to put in the hard work to get yourself to the stage, then all the power to you. Yay theatre entrepreneurs!

Ordinary Days is an Off-Broadway musical written by Adam Gwon. The show is about four young-ish people living in New York figuring out their next steps and interacting with each other in (perhaps) unexpected ways. There’s a couple – Jason and Claire – trying to figure out the next step in their relationship, a young artist/catsitter named Warren, and a stressy grad student named Deb. The show is almost entirely sung-through with barely any dialogue. It’s about 80 minutes long, and it moves quite quickly. The music is nice and contemporary – not offensive, but not one of my top shows. The acting of the songs is more important in this show than in others, I feel, because you don’t have as much to fall back on. (In contrast to a show like Carousel, for instance, where the music is so damn beautiful that you are immensely forgiving toward the inherent flaws in the show).

Here’s the thing that Shifting Ground decided to do differently, though: the four actors in the musical (Shannon Murtagh, Colette Richardson, Randy Lei Chang and Kevin Forster) flip a coin at the start of each show to determine which roles they’ll play for that performance. Suspense!

Ok, so being completely honest, I have mixed feelings on this. I like experimental theatre, and I like spontaneity. You could argue that changing up the casting keeps the show fresh for the actors (and in turn, for the audience). The coin toss moment itself was fun and suspenseful, and I liked how each cast member started in simple black attire and then added layers to represent their characters once they were assigned. It was a good dramatic moment.

On a practical level, Shannon and Colette only alternate between the two female roles, and Randy and Kevin the two male, so each actor plays one of two possible roles. It’s not like there’s some overtly against-type edgy casting choices that would drastically alter the character dynamics night to night. It’s 2 vocally similar male parts and 2 vocally similar female parts played by actors that could convincingly play either role. Plus, I didn’t know this show before, so I didn’t have any preconceived notions as to who the characters should be. I mean absolutely no disrespect in this critique, and they can do whatever they want – their show, their rules. And I do think the four actors were fairly successful in their respective roles. It just wasn’t my favourite choice. Different strokes.

Now, onto the production itself: the Pia Bouman Studio Theatre is an intimate, rectangular studio theatre in the west end of Toronto. Shifting Ground Collective chose to arrange the room as a “traverse stage” – so think of a catwalk with rows of seats facing each other with a long rectangular stage in the centre. Watching the audience members’ faces sitting across from us is effectively like watching a second show, and I shamelessly enjoy people watching. I’d say I was on the older end of people in attendance (that hurt to type), but the Gen-Zers looked super cool with their baggy pants and artsy vibes. I’m also very cool.

The set was minimal – there were a handful of chests painted white with colourful polka dots (housing all the props and serving as chairs/walls/whatever they needed to be in a scene) and a 3- or 4- step stair-ladder on wheels that gave me Arrested Development stair car vibes. I didn’t hate it – it’s a bare-bones show, so an unfussy set works well. There were also minimal but carefully chosen props – like a (nicely photoshopped) travel magazine, some picture frames and a leather notebook.

There was a song about a couple at a liquor store trying to pick out a bottle of wine, and one character sings that he picked out his favourite bottle of cabernet. The prop chosen was a bottle of Yellow Tail. I’m not a wine snob, but this made me smile because this was the brand we’d buy in undergrad due to budget constraints. I got much enjoyment thinking about the idea that this was genuinely someone’s favourite brand.

Anyway, on to the actual performances. I thought all four actors were good, and each had their own moments to shine:

• Kevin Forster as Warren: Kevin played a quirky, optimistic-yet-existentially lost artist type, and he was very likeable. His performance felt earnest, and there was almost a child-like quality to his Warren that was quite endearing. He also had some great comedic moments. I’ve seen Kevin onstage before (in a Fringe show last month), and I enjoy watching him perform.
• Randy Lei Chang as Jason: this was a tougher character for me to grab onto, because it felt like Jason only existed as a part of a pair with his girlfriend Claire (whereas Claire had a bit more meat to her character). Randy did a good job with the given material, though. He had some nice vocal moments, and he made his character feel relatable and grounded. When he sang about his love for his girlfriend, he had a twinkle in his eye that made me internally go “aww.”

Now, the guys were great, don’t get me wrong, but the women stole the show for me.

• Colette Richardson as Deb: her voice is very pretty and consistent, and her acting was fantastic. Deb is a difficult character – high-strung, neurotic, a bit in-her-own head – and I think she could easily have strayed into the “annoying” realm if played by a less skilled performer. Colette made Deb likeable, relatable, and someone I wanted to root for. I liked her solo numbers, and I liked her scenes with Warren and their relationship dynamic.
• Shannon Murtagh as Claire: her strong vocals gave me Six! The Musical vibes. Effortless acting – I particularly enjoyed her performance in the song “I’ll Be Here.” Throughout the show, you know her character is struggling with fully committing to her partner, but you don’t understand why until that song. Shannon’s nuanced acting choices made me believe her character’s arc.

Overall, this show felt vibrant, youthful, and energetic. The line “young, scrappy and hungry” from Hamilton feels like an apt descriptor for this company. The show has an underground theatre vibe, and there were a bunch of silly moments I really enjoyed (in particular, the little pantomime bits and the use of picture frames in the Met scenes). It’s not the most polished piece of theatre I’ve seen, but it’s not trying to be, and it was better than the majority of the Fringe shows I saw. I’ll be very happy to continue following Shifting Ground Collective’s journey, and thanks for inviting me along!

Ordinary Days is playing at the Pia Bouman Studio Theatre in Toronto (Bloor & Landsdowne) until Aug 26, 2023. Tickets can be purchased here.

Featured image: (L to R): Shannon Murtagh, Kevin Forster, Colette Richardson, Randy Lei Chang. Photo by Taylor Long. Taken from shiftinggroundcollective.com.