Michael Healey’s The Master Plan is currently playing in a collaboration between Crow’s Theatre and Soulpepper at the Michael Young Theatre.  It’s basically the same production and mostly the same cast and creative team as at Crow’s last year so I’ll not repeat everything I said in my rather long review of opening night at Crow’s.  There are two cast changes; Rose Napoli comes in as Kristina Verner and others and playwright Michael Healey replaces Peter Fernandes (who is off at Crow’s playing, appropriately enough, a dodgy real estate broker) as the Tree etc. It’s still staged, very effectively, in the round and the lighting and projections haven’t changed. What I want to concentrate on is how well does the piece stack up on a second viewing and in the light of other stuff that has happened/is happening in Ontario.

Bottom line, it has worn pretty well.  It’s still laugh out loud funny and it’s still relevant.  The first half, which focuses more on Big Tech hubris stands up better than the second.  Why would it not in a world where one of the most clueless of the Tech Bros is being handed the US Federal Government to reengineer?  Mike Shara’s portrayal of the obliviously arrogant Dan Doctoroff is still on point and, even if some of the “real life” characters have disappeared into well deserved obscurity using them is still a clever device.

Where it works less well is in the second half where it gets a bit preachy; more “tell” than “show” about the built in resistance to change in Canada/Ontario/Toronto.  To the characters in the play the rules and regulations around land sales, rezonng, the independence of the three levels of government and so on are immutable.  But since last year we have learned that’s far from true as Doug Ford has driven a coach and horses through them in the Green Belt, at Ontario Place and the Science Centre and has shown repeatedly that he can fist Toronto whenever he feels like it.  Ironically Google’s vision for the Quayside project was probably achievable but Doctoroff just didn’t work out that the answer was to get Ford on board!

Closely related to that is the whole “rules bound” mentality.  It’s just that; a mentality.  Apparently we love making rules whether it’s about cutting down trees, traffic flow or rezoning the Green Belt.  What’s missing from the analysis, and The Master Plan, is that all those rules can be ignored with impunity depending on who you are.  Ford’s been reamed out, as far as the Auditor General ever reams out a Premier, in the report on Ontario Place.  So what?  No consequences.  Drivers routinely ignore the traffic flow rules on King Street and the most that ever gets done is to put some dudes in hi-vis there to redirect the traffic but nobody gets ticketed.  I am prepared to bet that if the denizens of 164 Eastminster Road had just cut the bloody tree down without telling anybody nothing would have been done.  And the cleverest bit of Healey’s whole concept would have been reduced to wood chips!

That rant aside, The Master Plan holds up pretty well and is still sharp and very funny.   It’s well worth seeing especially if you missed it last year.  It’s playing at the Young Centre until January 5th.

Photo credits: Dahlia Katz