The sound of cicadas singing is one of the hallmarks of summer; that chirring can be heard night and day, sometimes at seemingly unbelievable volumes considering they’re insects. You can especially tell the years where the cycles have linked, and the alien-looking creatures cover the trees…or maybe even swarm your home near Trinity Bellwoods Park. Chris Thornborrow and David Yee’s cicadas, directed by Nina Lee Aquino, plays with classic horror tropes to create an eco-thriller that keeps you on the edge of your seat.

It’s 2032 and Trim and Janie have just found what they hope to be their dream house. The two of them are starting a family, and this beautiful home near Trinity Bellwoods Park in the heart of Toronto is a perfect fit for them. The realtor gives them a strict warning: do NOT go down into the basement. No one knows what awaits them, but it can’t be anything good. However, it’s not just the basement which contains the weird and wonderful, the whole house seems to have a mind of its own, and everything it touches from paintings to people are affected by its strange aura. In a world where cities are sinking and natural disasters are more frequent, what will happen to this seemingly perfect house and the family who resides within?

One of the arguments which they keep coming back to in cicadas has to do with mathematics versus faith. Janie’s mother Adeline is a maths professor, and Trim was one of her students. Adeline instilled in Trim a belief that mathematics helps humanity quantify the unknown; to help bring order to seeming chaos, though that order already exists. It’s only in the second act of the play where we find out that Adeline no longer believes in this, and instead has adopted a nearly nihilistic view of the world. This massive shift in opinion is what my fiancé and I spent the majority of the ride home talking about. He’s far more like Trim; he’s very mathematically minded (like does math in his head for fun), whereas I am definitely less inclined towards numbers, more like Janie. I felt like the revelation which Adeline comes to aligns far more with my own views of the world: that the beauty of nature has existed long before us and will for a long time afterwards, assuming that we don’t destroy all of it in our wake. Yet my fiancé fully shared Trim’s frustration with Adeline’s change of heart, as he finds that the mathematical side of nature enhances its beauty rather than detracting from it. As I was watching the show, I had thought about how Janie and Trim sounded like us – the artsy one with the big feelings and the math guy with a cool head on his shoulders. It was all the more amusing to me then when we launched into this full conversation on the way home, essentially mirroring the characters.

That being said, most of these issues arise in the second act of the play, and that’s where Thornborrow and Yee’s story feels like it begins to crumble like the house they’re writing about. The first act is a horror story being enacted right in front of you. There is incredible stage craft worked into Jawon Kang’s stunning set design, eliciting gasps and jumps from the audience (I jumped several times). I also found that I was able to better follow which room of the house they were in during the first act of the play, and once the second act began, it was like the rules they used to navigate the house previously were no longer in effect. Had the show ended at the end of the first act, I would have had nightmares for weeks; I felt like I couldn’t catch my breath at intermission, and I was almost scared for the rest of the play to begin. Yet what started as a very concrete (no pun intended) idea, soon devolved into this ideological argument about math and nature, which felt like it had little bearing on the actual mystery at hand. It felt a bit like “Lost”, where they hook you in with the unknown and magical, but then the resolution they have for the ending feels forced and detached from what you’ve previously witnessed.

I was excited that cicadas featured a live band performing on stage; the music and soundscape for this production are an integral part of the storytelling. Yet those musicians are hidden from the audience behind a massive wall. While they were slightly visible at times, and maybe more visible from other areas of the audience than where I was sitting, their presence didn’t pack as much of a punch as it could were they more easily visible to the whole room. However, the pieces which were composed for this production are dramatic and ethereal, a perfect companion to the world we’re witnessing.

cicadas has a trio of powerhouse performers bringing it to life. Ellora Patnaik plays several roles throughout the production, each one with its own unique characterizations which Patnaik beautifully embodies. Monica Dottor gives a heartbreakingly emotional performance as Janie. She goes through so much joy and loss and we feel every bit of it with her. Ryan Hollyman is able to bring the laughs, and the tears, as Trim. His comedic timing in some scenes mixed with the fervour he has in others make him enthralling to watch.

Though cicadas starts out strong, and by strong I mean nightmare-inducing, the resolution brought neither solace or understanding. The focus on mathematics, while intriguing, added an extra layer of complication to a show labelled as an eco-thriller; the thriller part was definitely there, but the eco-messaging got lost in the weeds. However, the performances, score, and surprises in the set make cicadas unlike anything you’ve ever seen.

cicadas runs in the Tarragon Theatre main space until May 24. For more information and tickets, visit: https://tarragontheatre.com/plays/2025-2026/cicadas/

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Cover Photo: Ellora Patnaik. Photo by Jae Yang.

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