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by Mark Crawford, directed by Irene Poole

Here For Now Theatre Company, Here For Now Theatre, Stratford

December 12-December 30, 2025

Ruby: “A newborn reindeer? And I’m the midwife?”

Mark Crawford’s latest play, Ruby and the Reindeer, has just received its world premiere from the Here For Now Theatre Company. Crawford has become such a popular playwright that the run was extended by a week before the play opened. Indeed, the play is such a delight it is sure to be the Christmas play that theatres will be staging across the country next year. For now, it must be said that the current production is so ideally cast and directed that it will serve as the high mark for all subsequent productions.

Ruby begins as a memory play. In 2025 a fit and funny middle-aged woman receives a red envelope and fears what it may contain. It may be an ordinary Christmas card, or it may be something much more mysterious and important. Because it may be the latter, she dreads to open it. The letter calls forth memories from a key period in her life in 1989 when she was 12 and lived with her father on his dairy farm in Perth County, Ontario. The Adult Ruby proceeds to watch her younger self, simply named Ruby, as she lives through that fateful time.

Her grandfather Gerry, whom she has never seen, has just dropped off a reindeer named B2 who seems to be ailing. Gerry had hoped that his son, Ruby’s dad Dave, would have the local vet check B2 out. Gerry planned to return shortly and take B2 back where he lives up north. Ruby is furious that Dave did not make Gerry stay so that she could finally meet him. Ruby thinks there has been some kind of major rift between Dave and Gerry and would like to know what happened so she can better understand her father.

The local vet comes by and Dave is not pleased. The vet is a young woman, Kathy, while he was expecting his longtime male vet. The relationship between Dave and Kathy thus gets off to a bad start but Ruby really likes Kathy as woman who won’t put up with Dave’s disparagement. Kathy discovers that B2 is not a he but a she and that her “illness” is simply pregnancy. Dave and Gerry will just have to wait until B2 delivers and then will have to wait for her to recover before she can be moved. This fits in with no one’s plans but those of Ruby who is overjoyed to take care of a reindeer about to give birth.

At this point Crawford’s play, while still a coming-of-age drama also becomes a rom-com. One of Ruby’s fondest wishes is to have a mother and it seems to her that Kathy and Dave would make a perfect pair. Ruby’s scheming and the vagaries of the weather conspire to bring the two adults together but not with the immediate results Ruby would like.

While Dave is out one day trying to buy a Christmas present for Ruby, Gerry appears and sees Ruby for the first time since she was born. Contrary to the view Dave had given her, Gerry turns out to be personable with a lively spirit of fun. Gerry’s proposal to let Ruby drive his new truck leads to a potentially major disaster and that disaster leads to an extraordinary surprise.

The surprise is quite literally unbelievable. It is so unbelievable that I assumed Crawford would take it back and the play would continue along the same realistic manner (within his metatheatrical memory play frame) as it had before. But no, Crawford wants his story to take an entirely new direction. In retrospect, I realized that this direction was not as “new” as I had thought. In fact, Crawford has well laid the groundwork for his surprise with numerous details that finally click into place once we understand the surprise. I will certainly not reveal what it is – and I hope no one else does either – since it took me some time to come to terms with the new information I learned, a process that Crawford perhaps intended.

Director Irene Poole has staged the play on the most elaborate set Here For Now has ever used. In the small Here For Now Theatre designer Francesca Callow has incredibly created the side of a wooden barn with two storeys, four doors and an interior, plus additional entrances on either side of the barn. Depending on the Adult Ruby’s narration the set represents either the inside of the farm house or barn or their exterior. Louise Guinand’s lighting admirably conjures up the chilly gleam of winter.

Poole has also drawn wonderfully natural performances from the entire cast. The play requires Maev Beaty to be more versatile than she has ever been and she is more than equal to the task. Beaty has always been a treat when playing a woman who is slightly goofy and awkward who becomes more awkward still because she is so self-conscious. That is how she plays the Adult Ruby.

But this is not all. Beaty also plays the reindeer B2 with all the panache of an experienced puppeteer. Beaty is not hidden. Her hand is inside the head of the whimsical reindeer puppet created by Ariel Slack and part of the reindeer’s “hide” is thrown over one shoulder. Beaty and Poole must have studied how hoofed animals react to humans because almost immediately we react to B2 as a character, not to Beaty as the puppeteer. As if that were not enough, Beaty also gives distinct voice to several minor characters including a grumpy telephone operator and an elderly neighbour.

Gordon S. Miller is so fully into his character as a put-upon father and farmer, uncomfortable with his responsibilities, that we almost forget Miller is acting. Miller carefully delineates Dave’s gradual change in his view of Kathy from animosity and disdain to warmth and respect.

Ijeoma Ewesowum is a real pleasure as Kathy, who has already encountered all the male farmer’s attitudes toward women doctors of any kind and knows how to counter their chauvinism with the right dose of humour. Miller and Ewesowum make the smart 1940s-style banter between Dave and Kathy one of the highlights of the show.

Benedict Campbell is the perfect choice for Gerald. It is good to see Campbell on stage again and in fine form. Campbell demonstrates how Gerry’s gleeful free spiritedness might well be the reason a sensible man like Dave might have issues in living with him. Yet, Campbell is able to show another, more powerful side of the character.

Excellent as all these familiar actors, the success of the show rests on the shoulders of the young Tabitha Campbell who plays Ruby. Campell (no relation to Ben) is an amazing talent. It would be easy but wrong to play Ruby as a clichéd wise-cracking kid. Campbell completely avoids clichés. She gives us a young person in all her moods, longings and contradictions. She understands that a 12-year-old can act in childish way in one moment and yet be smarter than an adult in another. Indeed, it is because Campbell portrays Ruby as such a fully-rounded character that we see how she could easily become the Adult Ruby of Maev Beaty.

Ruby and the Reindeer will put a smile on your face that returns every time you think of the show. One reason why Crawford’s plays have become so popular (and I have seen eight of them, some more than once) is that Crawford loves his characters in spite of their flaws or perhaps even because of them. His plays are filled with warmth, and that is particularly the case with Ruby whose rising spirit of joy lifts everyone along with it.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Tabitha Campbell as Ruby; Maev Beaty as Adult Ruby, Tabitha Campbell as Ruby and Gordon S. Miller as Dave; Gordon S. Miller as Dave and Benedict Campbell as Gerry with Tabitha Campbell as Ruby in background; Maev Beaty as B2 and Tabitha Campbell as Ruby; Ijeoma Ewesowum as Kathy and Gordon S. Miller as Dave. © 2025 Ann Baggley.

For tickets visit: www.herefornowtheatre.com.