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This acclaimed drama explores gender identity and intimacy with sensitivity, intelligence, and emotional honesty. Set in the Dutch port city of Rotterdam, the play follows Alice and Fiona, an English couple together for seven years. Alice has finally written the email she has long postponed, telling her parents she is gay. Before she can send it, Fiona reveals a truth that changes the trajectory of their relationship. She has always identified as male and now wants to begin living openly as a man named Adrian.

What unfolds is not simply a narrative about transition, but a deeply human examination of how truth reshapes love. As Adrian takes steps toward living authentically, Alice is forced to confront questions about her own identity that she never imagined asking. The play treats these uncertainties with compassion and clarity, allowing space for humour, tenderness, fear, and hope. As Fiona becomes Adrian, questions arise about love, attraction, and labels. If the person you love becomes someone of a different gender, how does that change your own identity? The play invites audiences to consider whether love can transcend the boundaries we place on it and what it means to be true to oneself.

Despite its serious themes, ROTTERDAM balances poignancy with humour and warmth. Brittain’s script balances emotional depth with warmth and wit, creating characters who feel vividly real. Supporting roles add texture and perspective, revealing how friends and family respond to change in ways that are sometimes supportive, sometimes hesitant, and always revealing. This Player’s Guild production promises a thoughtful and timely evening of theatre that invites empathy and reflection.

Later in the month, Dundas Little Theatre presents HOME, I’M DARLING by Laura Wade, running from January 23 to February 8, 2026. Winner of the Laurence Olivier Award for Best New Comedy, the play offers a sharply observed and often hilarious look at nostalgia, marriage, and modern expectations. At centre stage is Judy, played by Antoinette Laleon, a woman passionately committed to recreating an idealized 1950s domestic life. From vintage dresses to immaculate housekeeping, Judy embraces the role of the perfect stay at home wife with sincerity and joy, even as cracks begin to show beneath the polished surface.

Opposite her is Johnny, portrayed by Aleks Ristic, Judy’s husband and uneasy partner in this retro fantasy. A real estate agent struggling to balance ambition and financial reality, Johnny wants to support Judy but increasingly questions the cost of sustaining their shared ideal. Together, Laleon and Ristic deliver a nuanced portrait of a loving marriage shaped by compromise, desire, and unspoken pressure. Surrounding the central couple is a sharply drawn ensemble that brings humour and complexity to the story. Liz Buchanan plays Fran, Judy’s pragmatic and outspoken friend, who serves as a contemporary counterpoint to Judy’s retro ideals. Myles Rusak appears as Marcus, Johnny’s friend and colleague, whose own relationship struggles reflect different but equally challenging compromises.

Directed by Melissa Roberts, this production highlights the play’s sharp humour and emotional insight, inviting audiences to laugh while reflecting on why the pull of a romanticized past remains so strong. Wade’s script sparkles with rapid dialogue and situational comedy, but it also invites the audience to look beneath the polished surfaces of domestic fantasy. The production’s design evokes the visual language of the 1950s, from immaculate kitchens to carefully chosen details that reinforce Judy’s devotion to a bygone ideal, while gradually revealing how difficult it is to live inside a dream.

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