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by Lisa Nasson, directed by Mike Payette with Joelle Peters

Tarragon Theatre, Native Earth Performing Arts & Neptune Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, Toronto

January 21-February 8, 2026

“The Sun creates life and gives us our Shadows” (The Mi’kmaq Creation Story as told by Stephen Augustine)

What does it mean to belong? And is it ever really possible to step away from one’s roots? These questions come into focus near the end of the first act of Mischief, when Brooke, played by Lisa Nasson, gets in her car and drives away from the city, from her routine and from a situation she has been trying not to confront.

Written by Nasson herself, the play draws on a recent episode of Canadian history: the Indigenous-led protests against the statue of Edward Cornwallis (1713-76) in Halifax, long contested as a symbol of colonial violence. In Tarragon Theatre’s production, that public debate moves into the foreground of Brooke’s daily life, becoming inseparable from her experience as a Nova Scotian Mi’kmaw woman.

Brooke works at her uncle’s convenience store, where competing views of the world are difficult to avoid. On one side are her Uncle Chris (Jeremy Proulx) and her friend Tammy (Trina Moyan), both actively involved in protest and the ongoing work of cultural continuity. On the other is Fisherman Fred (Devin MacKinnon), a blunt, deliberately abrasive figure who embodies colonial entitlement, exercising dominance as an unquestioned right. Brooke would rather stay out of the conflict altogether, yet she is pulled into a confrontation where denial and erasure collide.

The rupture arrives in the form of Emily (Nicole Joy-Fraser), an ancestor who quite literally emerges from the store’s utility closet. This fiercely eccentric presence from three centuries ago — “the good kind of crazy”, as she defines herself — Emily functions as a disruptive force within the plot, interrupting Brooke’s careful neutrality and forcing a reckoning with histories, both personal and collective, that Brooke has been trying to keep at a distance.

From the opening moments of the show, director Mike Payette frames the stage as a symbolic area, using space to shape meaning and sustain the play’s central tensions with borders and containment emerging as the production’s central concern. The environment designed by Andy Moro is in constant motion, collapsing distinctions between inside and outside, nature and nurture, present and past. Projections move the audience through sky, sea and forest, while the stage itself rests inside the body of a whale, its exposed bones at once sheltering and uneasy. Within Indigenous cosmologies, the whale carries associations of lineage, community and spiritual passage, inflecting the space with Brooke’s ties to family and ancestral memory.

As both playwright and performer, Lisa Nasson gives the leading character a steady, grounded presence. She plays the role with restraint, allowing vulnerability to surface gradually under the pressure of unresolved history. It’s a performance that anchors the production and holds attention throughout.

The writing itself is clearly shaped in terms of dramaturgical arc, but it rarely grants the secondary characters full dimensionality, often serving their narrative purpose without developing much beyond it. The play also indulges in humour that often falls back on clichés and deliberately coarse jokes, a choice that limits its ability to engage with more ambivalent or contradictory expressions of power and Indigenous culture.

Emily’s role offers a clear case in point. Although Joy-Fraser brings the character energy and comic vitality, the part remains underwritten, stopping short of the depth and pathos needed to fully realize the disruptive potential of a Shakespearean fool. If Proulx and Moyan’s performances tend toward caricature, MacKinnon offers the production’s most effective supporting performance, bringing notable control to his dual role. His Fisherman Fred is as genuinely nauseating in the first act as his Good Guy is disarmingly sweet in the second.

Ultimately, Mischief’s political urgency sometimes constrains its dramatic complexity, flattening character dynamics and leaving less room for tension to fully develop. Still, as Nasson’s first full-length play, it marks a notable debut, introducing a voice shaped by clarity of purpose and conviction. The work is at its strongest when it moves from activist momentum toward the quieter, more intimate terrain of identity, a preoccupation that has surfaced across Toronto stages this season, from The Green Line at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre to King Gilgamesh at Soulpepper Theatre, where questions of belonging and self-definition are likewise placed under pressure.

Alessandro Stracuzzi

Photos: Lisa Nasson as Brooke and Nicole-Joy Fraser as Emily; Lisa Nasson as Brooke. © 2026 Jae Yang.

For tickets visit: tarragontheatre.com.