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by Amanda Wilkin, directed by Cherissa Richards

Nightwood Theatre with Buddies in Bad Times, Buddies in Bad Times, Toronto

April 24-May 4, 2025

“A new skin honouring old skin”

Shedding a Skin is a heart-warming solo show from 2021 by Black British playwright Amanda Wilkin. It begins as an amusing observational comedy about being 30 years old, mixed-race, female and single in present-day London but it grows into much more profound depiction of finding one’s identity by understanding one’s elders. The play is a great vehicle for Vanessa Sears, who proves among her many other talents, to be an engaging storyteller.

The 90-minute-long play begins with Sears as Myah feeling emotionally and creatively boxed in. Director Cherissa Richards emphasizes this point by placing Sears in a box-like set designed Jung-Hye Kim open only in the front. Myah is only one of three non-White people working in the office, one of whom is the cleaner. When Myah is called in with the two other non-White workers for a photo to advertise how diverse the company is, she throws a fit, damages property and is fired.

When her boyfriend doesn’t give her the understanding she hoped for, they break up. So, she finds herself in the humiliating position of having to return home to her parents for a weekend, feeling as if she still isn’t able to stand on her own at age 30.

Myah does find another job and does move out of her parents’ house, but all she can afford is renting a room from an old woman in an apartment block. The old woman is Mildred, who immigrated from Jamaica in 1962. A British audience would know that Mildred’s date of immigration makes her part of the Windrush generation, people primarily from the Caribbean who, as British citizens, were invited to help rebuild Britain after the war but who faced discrimination, denial of services and even detention after they arrived.

Myah feels that Mildred is always judging her and the list of dos and don’t for living with Mildred seems to increase every day. When Mildred discovers that Myah is at home on a Friday night, Mildred wonders why. She should be out dancing. This is Myah’s first indication that Mildred is actually concerned about Myah personal life. About her own past life, Mildred says nothing, which only makes Myah more curious. As Myah comes to observe how Mildred is so respected in the community, Myah starts to realize that the feeling of been connected to others is something that Mildred has that she does not.

With the example of the proud Black young woman who takes no nonsense at work and that of the morally upright Mildred, Myah, whose inner feeling of rebellion burst out at the start of the play, learns how important connection is to discovering her individuality – both a connection to others around her and a connection to those in the past. I don’t want to give away any surprises but one of the great pleasures of the production is how Sears is able to open out the box of the set the to reflect the greater freedom that Myah feels. Shawn Henry’s wide range of lighting effects and Laura Warren’s projections are key in underlining Myah’s progress from self-confinement to burgeoning life.

Periodically throughout the play we hear announcements of events occurring elsewhere – mostly bad, some good – that are happening simultaneously with events that Myah has just narrated. The technique is not wholly successful but it seems to be intended to show that Myah is connected to a wider range of events that she is aware of.

Sears is wonderfully sympathetic as Myah. We completely understand her urge to fit in but we also understand her outrage at being made to front an advertisement for diversity for a company that does not actually value it. One of the techniques that Wilkin has built into the text is to have Myah say things and then turn away to us, as if in an aside, to comment on what she has just said. Sears makes these asides hilarious as Myah’s inner self appears constantly exasperated by what her outer self is doing. There is an especially fine example of this when Myah is going out on a date and the persona she presents to her date keeps deviating from what her inner self knows she ought to do.

Though Sears expertly impersonates more than 20 characters – both young and old, both male and female – the next most important character after Myah is Mildred. Wilkin has made Mildred a marvellously memorable figure, small in stature but a tower of strength. Sears has mastered Mildred’s lovely Jamaican accent that gives her words an authority that Myah’s proper British accent lacks. Sears uses gesture and posture to reinforce Myah’s view and ours of Mildred as a formidable woman who experienced more of the world than Myah ever will. What makes Shedding a Skin such a moving play is how Myah gradually comes to appreciate what this older woman can offer her.

The play may start small in scale in production and in theme but it opens out magnificently by its conclusion. Wilkin’s play is wise enough to show that the walls Myah has to break through are not just those set up by other people, but also those that she has set up around herself. Myah’s journey to understand that connection is the key to self-understanding and that the past is both more complex and more important that we imagined is one that we all can benefit from.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Vanessa Sears as Myah. © 2025 Jeremy Mimnagh.

For tickets visit: buddiesinbadtimes.com.