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What begins as a simple dinner invitation quickly becomes something far more volatile in LATE COMPANY, a searing contemporary drama that places grief, accountability, and social responsibility under an unforgiving spotlight. Dundas Little Theatre’s current production brings this internationally acclaimed Canadian work to local audiences, offering a theatrical experience that is as intimate as it is unsettling.

The play introduces us to Conservative politician Michael Shaun Hastings, and his wife Debora, a sculpture artist, whose art is on display in the room; they are still reeling from the suicide of their teenage son Joel one year earlier. In an attempt to seek understanding, if not closure, they invite Joel’s former classmate Curtis and his parents to dinner. Curtis is believed to have been one of Joel’s primary tormentors at school. The gathering is framed as a step toward healing. What unfolds instead is a slow and often excruciating unravelling of civility, as buried tensions rise to the surface and the question of responsibility refuses to settle neatly onto any one set of shoulders.

Tannahill’s script is built on the fragile architecture of polite conversation. Small talk and social niceties gradually give way to accusation, deflection, and deeply felt emotion and grief. The dinner table becomes a battleground where each character is forced to confront not only the tragedy itself, but their own role within a broader cultural context that allowed it to happen. The play resists easy answers. Instead, it asks its audience to sit with discomfort and to examine the grey areas between intention and consequence.

Jordan Tannahill is an award winning Canadian novelist, playwright, and director whose work spans theatre, literature, film, and performance. His debut novel LIMINAL won France’s 2021 Prix des Jeunes Libraires, while his second novel THE LISTENERS was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and adapted for BBC television by Janicza Bravo. His plays have been staged internationally at venues ranging from London’s Young Vic to New York’s Lincoln Center, and he has twice received the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. His recent play PRINCE FAGGOT premiered Off Broadway in 2025. Beyond theatre, his interdisciplinary practice includes virtual reality work such as DRAW ME CLOSE, collaborations in dance with artists like Akram Khan, and the founding of the influential Toronto art space Videofag. In 2019, CBC Arts recognized him as one of sixty nine LGBTQ Canadians who have shaped the country’s cultural history.

Under the capable direction of Francesca Brugnano, this production brings together a tightly focused ensemble tasked with navigating a shifting emotional terrain with precision and restraint. James Vazina and Deanna Mae Lloyd take on the central roles of Michael and Debora Shaun Hastings, anchoring the evening with performances that must balance grief, anger, and a fragile desire for understanding. Opposite them, Christine Marchetti and Tim Hevesi portray Tamara and Bill Dermot, navigating the uneasy position of parents caught between defence and denial. Completing the cast, teenager Andrew Plasky, as Curtis, carries the difficult burden of embodying a character whose presence alone destabilizes the room.

The themes explored in the play remain urgently relevant. Bullying, particularly in the context of sexuality and identity, forms the emotional core of the narrative. Joel was targeted for being openly gay and for refusing to conform to the expectations of his peers. Yet the play complicates this narrative by refusing to frame the situation in purely binary terms of victim and villain. Curtis and his parents are not presented as monsters, just as Joel’s parents are not presented as beyond reproach. Instead, Tannahill examines how systems of behaviour, social pressures, and unspoken biases contribute to tragedy in ways that are often invisible until it is too late.

Tannahill wrote LATE COMPANY at the remarkably young age of twenty three, yet the play demonstrates a mature and nuanced understanding of human behaviour. Since its premiere at Toronto’s SummerWorks Performance Festival in 2013, the work has travelled internationally, including a celebrated run at the Trafalgar Studios in London’s West End. Its continued resonance speaks to both the specificity of its characters and the universality of its concerns.

Audience members should be aware that the production deals directly with themes of youth suicide, bullying, and homophobic language. These elements are central to the play’s exploration of its subject matter. At its heart, LATE COMPANY asks a question that lingers long after the final line is spoken. How well can a parent ever truly know their child? It is a question without a comfortable answer, and that is precisely the point. For audiences willing to engage with its difficult terrain, it promises a powerful and thought provoking evening of theatre.

REVIEW

Now that I have seen the production, these additional reflections shift from preview into response. This is a remarkable script, and far from typical community theatre fare. Dundas Little Theatre deserves real credit for the courage and conviction to stage LATE COMPANY for Hamilton audiences. It is not an easy sell, but it is an essential one.

  Dundas Little Theatre’s production team, led by John Bello, with a creative set design by Graham Clements, has transformed the performance space into something intensely immersive. The play’s setting, centred around a dining table, places the audience in close proximity to the action. It is a staging choice that encourages a sense of voyeurism. We are not merely watching the evening unfold. We are, in a sense, seated at the table ourselves, compelled to witness every uncomfortable exchange and shifting alliance.

  At the centre of the evening are two letters, both written in memory of Joel, a sixteen year old only child, who was bright, articulate, and deeply engaged with English and drama. He played Oberon, “the King of the Fairies” in a grade nine school production of A MIDSUMMER NIGHT’S DREAM, and is described as a gifted, award winning writer struggling with his identity as a queer teenager isolated by his peers. In many ways, he feels like an alter ego of playwright Tannahill at that age. The play imagines the circumstances that might unfold in the darkest possible version of that experience.

  The first letter is read by Joel’s mother, played by Deanna Mae Lloyd, and even a year after his death it lands with overwhelming force. It is not composed or restrained; it is raw, visceral, and filled with anger at the unjust and unforgiving reality of her son’s suicide. She speaks of his potential and of the life he might have lived, and the account becomes almost unbearable as she recalls finding his body. It is difficult not to be deeply affected as an audience member confronted with such unfiltered grief.

  This is set in stark contrast to the brief letter of apology read by Andrew Plasky’s Curtis. It feels tentative and carefully constructed, and there is a strong suggestion that it may not be entirely his own voice. Delivered with the hope of absolution, it recalls the kind of statements heard in courtrooms when responsibility is being managed rather than truly accepted. Placed beside the mother’s letter, it exposes the limits of apology when accountability remains unclear. The dinner that follows becomes an extended argument over blame, with each parent searching for some explanation.

  It is particularly striking that Joel’s father Micheal, played by James Vazina, as a conservative MPP, who never openly acknowledged his son’s sexuality. Joel was not “out of the closet”, at home, and the conversation that might have mattered most never took place. The contrast with Curtis’s father, Bill, played by Tim Hevesi, is quietly revealing. Though he embodies a more traditional masculinity and is the father of several children, there is a sense that he might have responded with greater acceptance. The play does not make this explicit, but the implication lingers in the subtext and complicates any easy assumptions about who holds progressive or regressive views.

  Hindsight is always clear, and the play engages directly with that impulse to reconstruct events after the fact. We live in a culture shaped by debates around identity and the pressures of conformity, particularly in how young people are raised. The “It Gets Better” campaign, created by Dan Savage and Terry Miller in 2010, is referenced as part of this broader conversation, reminding us of attempts to offer hope in the face of very real crises affecting queer youth.

  In the end, this is a remarkable story and an exceptional evening of theatre. Too often, local productions can feel comfortable or familiar, leaving little lasting impact. This play is different. It challenges its audience to reflect on personal responsibility and on the role each of us plays in shaping a more compassionate world. Dundas Little Theatre has partnered with Queer Connect, a meaningful gesture that resonates personally, as my own first encounters with openly gay individuals came through community theatre. You leave the performance changed, and perhaps a little wiser. If there is any justice, the remaining performances should be sold out.

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