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by Judith Thompson, directed by Mike Payette

Tarragon Theatre, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, Toronto

March 11–April 5, 2026

Maeve: “Why am I alive?”

When the Here For Now Theatre Company gave Queen Maeve its world premiere in Stratford in 2023, I wrote, “the show is mandatory viewing for the play itself and for Clare Coulter’s performance in particular. [A] play as beautifully written as this and with such an astounding performance as Coulter’s needs to be seen by the largest possible audience. I do hope the production can visit at least one other city so that people can delight in it”. It is extremely gratifying to have that wish fulfilled. Tarragon Theatre is giving the play its Toronto premiere and such is the demand the run has already been extended. Do not hesitate to see this play.

Joining Coulter from the original cast is Caroline Gillis. New are Sarah Orenstein as Maeve’s daughter Georgia and Ryan Bommarito as Georgia’s son and Maeve’s grandson Jake. Director Mike Payette’s production for the Tarragon eliminates the onstage musician of the original production who played Gaelic tunes to highlight Maeve’s manifestations of her true nature. Instead, Payette uses theatrical smoke, John Gzowski’s sound design and radical shifts in Jason Hand’s lighting to signal Maeve shifts, which combined have the effect of overkill compared to the simplicity of the HFN production.

The text has undergone minor changes and Maeve utters much more in Gaelic than I recall, but Coulter’s outstanding performance is just as powerful as it was in 2023. As I stated then: “The play is written for a senior female actor who can deliver a tour-de-force performance and that is exactly what the role receives from Clare Coulter. Coulter’s performance will leave you awe-struck with wonder”.

The background of the story has remained the same: “[Maeve], when she was still working, had the humble job of selling shoes in a mall shoe store. She speaks directly to us as if we were her confidants. To us she reveals that contrary to her seemingly undistinguished life and her present decrepit appearance, she is really Queen Maeve, the renowned warrior queen of Irish legend. For the elderly woman, whom we call Maeve, Queen Maeve was a figure from history, not fantasy.

“She knows all the legends about herself in minute detail. She knows that Maeve was so sexually alluring that men fighting against her would lose two-thirds of their valour. She has an affinity for wolves. She knows that Maeve was buried 3000 years ago in Miosgán Médhbh in a stone cairn at the top of Knocknarea in County Sligo standing upright, holding a spear and facing her enemies in Ulster.

“Maeve answers all the questions that arise from her claim to be the ancient Queen Maeve. How can she be dead and buried in Ireland and yet be alive in Canada? Answer: Maeve had the support of Macha, the goddess of war, and could thus do impossible things. Why would the most beautiful woman in Ireland take on the disguise of an old woman in Canada? Answer: the better to surprise her enemies to take revenge.

“And Maeve the old woman does take revenge. During the course of the play’s 90 minutes, Maeve has three visitors – her grandson Jake, Georgia, her daughter and Jake’s mother, and Siobhan, the PSW who takes care of Maeve. Against the first two Maeve takes merciless revenge. Siobhan, however, she loves as if she were her daughter”.

Thompson notion of presenting an 88-year-old woman as Queen Maeve is still brilliant: “Through her portrait of Maeve, Thompson presents us with a symbol of womanhood fighting the onslaught of old age. Maeve’s periodic transformations into a famous warrior queen simply makes explicit the implicit struggle Maeve has with the outside world. Maeve’s view of her ‘real self’ as Queen Maeve represents the strength of individuality that she holds onto in the face of an outside world that lumps her together with all other aged people as pathetic and useless”.

It is so heartening to see that the strength of Coulter’s performance in 2023 has not diminished one iota: “Clare Coulter’s performance is simply magnificent. She invests every word and every pause with so much meaning that Thompson’s prose comes near to poetry. Coulter portrays Maeve as caught between two realities. One is that of an old woman in a nightgown who is losing control over her body and may be losing control over her mind. The other is that of her defiant inner self that she identifies with the legendary Queen Maeve bearing a sword who is proud and wrathfully dispenses with anyone who does not meet her high standards of how to lead a noble life.

“What is so magical about Thompson’s text and Coulter’s performance is how easily Coulter slides from one reality to the other simply through change of tone and facial expression. Coulter does this so effectively that when Maeve the old woman transforms into the legendary Queen Maeve, we start to believe that the spirit of the ancient queen really is taking over and revivifying the aged woman’s body. The implacable hatred she turns on Jake and Georgia and King Lear-like imprecations she rains down on both of them are truly frightening. In fact, we begin to wonder whether Maeve’s notion is really true that the aged body is merely a disguise used by the warrior queen.

“When the wrath of the legendary queen passes, Maeve returns to her everyday status and asks herself, as the legendary queen never would, whether she has done the right thing. The greatness of Coulter’s performance lies in never allowing us to be certain which of the two realities best defines the woman we see before us”.

Sarah Orenstein and Ryan Bommarito as Georgia and Ryan are able replacements for Allegra Fulton and Michael Neale in the original production. Jake, Maeve’s beloved grandson, is Maeve’s first visitor. Bommarito plays the character with boundless energy, so much so that we, like Maeve, begin to become suspicious of what basis there is for Jake’s optimism. The fact that Maeve can love Jake and yet see through his lies is the clearest sign we have that Maeve, despite her belief in her mythic origin, in fact has a firmer grip on reality than those around her.

Maeve’s second visitor is Georgia. Like Maeve’s encounter with Jake, Thompson beautifully orchestrates a scene that begins with superficial loving attention from the visitor that Maeve soon mercilessly exposes as play-acting. Orenstein shows that Georgia, who struggles to maintain the pose of a loving daughter, is at first completely taken aback by Maeve’s vicious attacks until Georgia crumbles completely defeated and humiliated at her feet.

It is difficult to imagine anyone better than Caroline Gillis to play Maeve’s PSW (Personal Support Worker) Siobhan. Gillis’s Siobhan has lost none of the loving common sense that so well counters the fantastical, emotional labile Maeve. As I remarked in 2023, “Siobhan is the only person who dares to call Maeve by her real name. Maeve forbids it, but Siobhan will have none of her eccentricity and just wants to do her job. Yet, Caroline Gillis shows that Siobhan puts such love into her care for Maeve that it drains the anger and irritation out of Maeve. Gillis makes the scene where Siobhan singing an old tune simply washes Maeve’s hair into the most touching moment of the play. The scene is really one that stands out of time. Is a handmaiden washing Queen Maeve’s hair or is a PSW just carefully tending to an old woman?”

The prime difference between the Tarragon production and that of Here For Now is that the Here For Now production was sublimely minimalist. In 2023 HFH was still performing its plays outdoors in a tent. The small playing area had room only for a bed, a chair and table. The opening of the tent flap to the outdoors was the only scenery and Cait Watson’s music the only accompaniment.

Designer Ken MacDonald has apparently not paid attention to the text’s many references to the home where Maeve lives as a dump. He gives Maeve what would be an usually spacious room with a corner window that one might find only in an expensive nursing home in a repurposed mansion. We hear that the one activity Maeve enjoys at the home is art, but that is no reason to cover virtually the wall space of this large room with Maeve’s artwork including places one could only reach with a ladder. It makes the background for the actors far too fussy and displaces Maeve’s fantasies into pictures rather than keeping them bound up only in the words she speaks.

One reason why the HFH production worked so well is that the minimalist production allowed us to imagine whatever the characters spoke of, real or mythical. Throughout the Tarragon production, I felt the overdetailed realistic set tied the audience too closely to the dull world of the nursing home and did not accurately represent the twilight halfway between myth and reality where Maeve’s consciousness actually resides.

Despite this, what counts is Thompson’s play with its wrenching scenes of beauty, rage and pitiless truth-telling and Coulter’s performance, certainly the greatest performance anyone will see on stage in Toronto this year. Coulter is a living national treasure and it is a privilege to be in any audience where she holds court.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Clare Coulter as Queen Maeve; Caroline Gillis as Siobhan and Clare Coulter as Queen Maeve; Clare Coulter as Queen Maeve and Ryan Bommarito as Ryan; Clare Coulter as Queen Maeve and Sarah Orenstein as Georgia. © 2026 Jae Yang.

For tickets visit: tarragontheatre.com.