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written & directed by Gregory Prest

Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Mainspace, 30 Bridgman Avenue, Toronto

October 8-26, 2025

Frau Esel: “Why does everything have to end”

Tarragon Theatre has opened its 2025/26 season with the world premiere of Bremen Town written and directed by Gregory Prest. Prest takes as his basis the Grimm Brothers’ tale of the “Bremen Town Musicians” (“Die Bremer Stadtmusikanten”) of 1819, but he changes the story about domestic animals who are neglected when they reach old age to one about human beings in the same situation. Prest’s hugely impressive play is full of humour and compassion, the production is beautifully designed and the acting, featuring a starry cast of senior actors, is superb.

Many people will recall the story of the “Bremen Town Musicians” in which four animals who have outlived their usefulness are turned out of the farms where they lived. They band together to find a place to live and come upon a house occupied by bandits. The four animals make such a noise they scare the bandits away and make the house their new home.

In Prest’s version, the focus is on Frau Esel (“Esel” means “donkey” in German), who has been fired from her job as housekeeper after 45 years of service. In the original, the Donkey sets off from Bremen with the goal of becoming a musician. In Prest’s version Frau Esel sets off for Bremen to live with her son who is a member of a symphony orchestra there. In the original the Donkey meets three more rejected animals in sequence – a dog, a cat and a rooster. Here Frau Esel meets three past-their-prime human characters – Herr Hund, Herr Katze and Frau Henne.

Prest omits the sequence of the animals scaring off the bandits and taking over their house, and his equivalent to the donkey does actually make it to Bremen, though with no intent of becoming a musician. Prest’s greatest change to the Grimms’ story is his presenting a kite festival as the place on the way to Bremen where Herr Hund, Herr Katze and Frau Henne would most like to visit. The kite festival, beautifully imagined by Prest and made real by designer Nancy Perrin, serves a symbolic of a place where people can let go of all the misgivings, fears and sorrows that have been weighing them down.

What is so remarkable about the play is how Prest has taken one of the Grimms’ shorter tales (it’s only 1160 words) and turned into a playful yet profound meditation on ageing and death. Prest shows amazing insight into the thoughts that sometimes occur to some seniors in darker moments. I have heard some friend say they have “outlived their usefulness” or that they are “just taking up space”. One of the existential questions Prest asks is how to live your life when that life is no longer needed by anyone.

During Frau Esel’s travels where she keeps telling the group to keep moving, it’s hard not to hear echoes of the famous lines that end Beckett’s 1953 novel The Unnamable: “I can’t go on. I’ll go on”. Another parallel is to Pozzo and Lucky in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (1953) in the form of a Bear tamer and his Dancing Bear. The merciless tyrant of a Tamer whips the poor beast to make it dance and when it can’t he kills it. As in Godot, the fate of the Bear shows the four travellers that there is a worse fate than what they have experienced.

Besides this, Prest shows a growing tension between Frau Esel and Herr Hund that derives from their two contrasting ways of viewing life. Frau Esel is single-minded in her determination to go on her quest to Bremen despite the doubts that Herr Hund sows concerning whether her son will even welcome her. Herr Hund thinks a person should enjoy all the varied sights that one encounters along the way. Simply put, Frau Esel sees the goal as the point of a journey, whereas Herr Hund sees the journey itself as the goal.

As director, Prest has assembled an outstanding cast of four senior actors and four younger actors. Of the senior actors, two, Nancy Palk and William Webster, are founding members of Soulpepper. Another, Oliver Dennis, has performed in close to 100 productions with Soulpepper. And the fourth, Sheila McCarthy, had her breakout role in the film I’ve Heard the Mermaids Singing (1987) and has acted and directed across the country ever since. The presence of such veteran actors on stage in the same play already makes Bremen Town self-recommending.

Palk gives an outstanding performance. Frau Esel experiences the greatest change in the course of the action and Palk conveys the stages of this change with humour, subtlety and poignancy. When we first meet Frau Esel, she is full of rage at having been let go from her work at Völksenhaus after 45 years of faithful service. Her plan to see her son is clearly not born of any real desire to see him after so long a time but rather is an act to show to prove to herself that she doesn’t need her employers anymore. As more people join her journey, Frau Esel’s narrow view that “the world is a terrible place” begins to contrast with the that of her companions.

Palk shows us that each encounter she and her crew make chips away at the importance to her of reaching Bremen. Just as Vladimir in Godot posits staying in one place as a reason for existing, so Frau Esel posits visiting her son as her reason for existing. Each time Palk repeats Frau Esel’s goal it seems to lose strength and become less real. As Frau Esel’s anger subsides and she gives into her companions’ wishes, like visiting the kite festival, Palk makes clear that Frau Esel begins to see that her constant mocking of the three is unnecessary and unkind. Palk makes the ending in which Frau Esel works from quiet devastation to expansive joy one of the most exquisite moments in theatre this year.

Oliver Dennis is absolutely hilarious as Frau Esel’s opposite, the failed magician Herr Hund. The few magic tricks Dennis performs as Herr hund are really surprising, but it’s clear that Herr Hund has forgotten most of his repertoire and his patter has gone stale. Dennis wonderfully captures Herr Hund’s ability to admit his own woeful inadequacies and his quixotic ability always to believe something better will come along. As Herr Hund, Dennis lifts us up with his childlike innocence as he notices the variety of birds and the pleasures of nature along the way even though his remarks only annoy Frau Esel.

In Prest’s play, Herr Katze and Frau Henne are long-lost siblings. William Webster and Sheila McCarthy bring out all the ironic humour, quirkiness and warmth of their joyful return to togetherness despite decrepitude, rather like the binned lovers Nagg and Nell in Beckett’s Endgame (1957).

Only one other actor plays a named role and that is Tatjana Cornij, who plays Vogel (“bird” in German), the narrator of the story. Cornij belongs neither to the senior actors playing the other named roles nor to the three actors labelled as “young”. Her position in the middle is appropriate for character who visits both young and senior characters in the play. Cornij, also the show’s composer, opens the show accompanying herself on the accordion with a powerful, full-throated chant in the style of ancient folksong that leads us into the world of parable that the play inhabits. As a narrator aware of everything that will transpire, Cornij speaks her lines with a tone of knowing irony. She speaks of the characters using the English translation of the animal names, thus underlining the story as fable. As played by Cornij, Vogel is a wise, mysterious personage who tells us her story for reasons that only become clear towards the end.

The other three cast members, listed as Young Actor 1, 2 and 3, play a dizzying number of roles of all types. Farhang Ghajar’s most notable role is that of the abusive Bear Trainer, but he also adept at playing a young girl. Dan Mousseau’s most memorable role is playing the aged Bear. Even though wearing a masking covering his entire head, Mousseau movingly conveys the Bear’s suffering through movement and gesture. Veronica Hortigüela’s most salient role is as Frau Henne’s terribly cruel daughter, a role all the more surprising given how well Hortigüela has also played a number of innocent little girls.

The play’s action is framed, literally, by a beautiful proscenium designed by Nancy Perrin. The proscenium is made up of seven panels patterned after the folk-art of Scherenschnitte, or using scissors to cut a scene or figure from a single piece of paper. Each of the panels portray scenes or themes that are referred to in the play. As lit from behind by Logan Raju Cracknell these elaborate silhouettes look like illustrations for deluxe edition of children’s fairy-tales. The panels are so exquisite that I hope there is some plan to preserve them after the show’s run is over.

A major factor that makes Bremen Town unusual is that it focusses on the lives of seniors and employs actor who are senior to play those roles. With all the talk in the recent past about making theatre more inclusive, one group never mentioned is older people. Everyone knows that ageism is a problem and yet theatre festivals and companies in Ontario have reduced the number of actors they employ who are over 55. At the same time hardly any companies programme plays where older people are the main characters. Even when they do, they don’t necessarily hire people of the appropriate age to play the roles.

Given all this, it is extremely refreshing to see a play like Bremen Town with veteran actors playing elderly characters and where those characters are varied and complex rather than the simple caricatures one too often sees. Prest treats his four travellers with compassion. Their journey teaches us that life is a gift to be enjoyed for as long as it happens to last.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Dan Mousseau as Young Actor 1, Nancy Palk as Frau Esel, Veronica Hortigüela as Young Actor 2, Oliver Dennis as Herr Hund and Farhang Ghajar as Young Actor 3; Sheila McCaryhy as Frau Henne and William Webster as Herr Katze; Tatiana Cornij as Vogel; set by Nancy Perrin with Nancy Palk as Frau Esel, Tatiana Cornij as Vogel and Oliver Dennis as Herr Hund. © 2025 Jae Yang.

For tickets visit: tarragontheatre.com.