Jericho Arts Centre to May 17, 2026
Tickets from $34 (Students $15 with ID) at 604-224-8007 or www.vitalsparktheatre.com
Posted May 4, 2026
So reminiscent of Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales, it’s hard to imagine CITYSONG without the precedent having been set. Playwright Carys D. Coburn’s CITYSONG, which premiered in Dublin’s Abbey Theatre in 2017 and is now enjoying its Canadian premiere at the Jericho Arts Centre, is a glorious celebration of language and the cycle of life: birth, death and much that happens in between. Lyrical and meditative, it often feels more like poetry than theatre, but with language that’s this lushly inventive – delivered in lilting Irish accents by this cast of nine – it’s easy to sit back and simply luxuriate in the words. It’s the kind of play that makes you want to follow along with the script so you don’t miss a single, soaring, swoop of wordsmithery.
Set in present-day Dublin, CITYSONG is one day in the life of three generations of an extended Irish family. Some are born; some pass away. It’s a picture of life with all its everyday-ness. No huge events. No fireworks. Just the business of getting on with life beginning with a cabbie ferrying passengers through the city in the wee small hours. “Can’t complain,” he says. “Could be worse”.
Next, we find Kate (Claire DeBruyn), plus three other ‘soon-to-be-mothers’, labouring on their backs, legs spread, in hospital gowns in a maternity ward, cursing the husbands and boyfriends who put them in this situation. Normally, I don’t like these scenes of howling and cursing, “breathing” and “pushing” but director Bryans does a bang-up job of this scene before Kate is delivered of a “greasingly shiny baby” (or, at least, that’s what it sounded like) – the child for whom she and husband Rob (Jono Klassen) have waited eight years.
The day progresses and we meet Brigid (Kim Little), Kate’s widowed mother who, since the death of her beloved husband, wonders how she will spend her remaining days. “Will I be kissed again? Be held again? What am I supposed to do?” She can’t always find the words for things anymore but holding her newborn grandson brings her immeasurable joy.
And we hear motherly advice to a daughter: “When you’re married you wear a nightgown, not pyjamas.” That was, it seems, all she had to offer.
“Time ticks on onward, not unkindly.” Characters come and go with characters/narrators stepping in to set the scenes in the style of Tennessee Williams’ Glass Menagerie but with a rotation of all the performers taking a narrative turn.
Set designer R. Todd Parker provides a functional wide, wide set with a backdrop of windows and/or picture frames. Stage left is Brigid’s armchair; stage right features a multi-globed vintage streetlamp. Lighting design is by Sam Cheng. Costumes by Claire Turner. Intimacy director is Alina Quarin. This very fine cast includes Alex Bloor, Mukta Chachra, Claire DeBruyn, Daryl Hutchings, Jono Klassen, Kim Little, Gaia Preite, Lauren Jane Ross and Liam Atticus Wong.
Playwright Coburn (formerly Dylan Coburn Gray) was originally commissioned to write a piece for a spoken word festival and this clearly is CITYSONG’S genesis. Its great strength is its soaringly musical use of language and its gentle, compassionate treatment of ordinary lives. Somewhat surprisingly, playwright Coburn was only twenty-five at the time of the writing of CITYSONG; understanding the dreams and fears across three generations is impressive in one so young.
Do not expect explorations of the IRA, the “Troubles” or contemporary Irish politics. Do not anticipate Riverdance. Do expect to be transported by language. Embrace it; let it take you away.
Kudos to Vital Spark Theatre and its dedication to “breathing life into old things, shining light in dark corners and bringing new twists to the time-worn in the theatrical world.”