Presentation House to February 15, 2026
Tickets from $20 at 604-990-3474 or www.phtheatre.org
Posted February 13, 2026
Why am I driving on a dark, rainy night over the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge to see The Baking Show Show at Presentation House in North Van? I hate baking shows. I hate shows with winners and losers. Don’t get me wrong: I love baking but, no stranger to baking failures, why would I want to watch some poor cook be humiliated for all in TV-land to see?
Well, The Baking Show Show is part of Ruby Slippers Theatre’s Advance Theatre Production Program “whose members’ mandate is to champion and support emerging equity deserving artists through a professional production experience so that they can explore and hone their craft, their process and their voice.” And the company’s artistic director is Diane Brown, a multi-award-winning actor/director and the founder and torch-bearer of Ruby Slippers, one of Canada’s most successful independent theatre companies. In 2017, Brown won the prestigious Bra D’Or award for her advancement of Canadian women playwrights.
That’s why I’m driving across the bridge.
The Baking Show Show is centred around, not surprisingly, a baking show with various components over several days or weeks: the Basic Bake, the Ability Bake and the Big Bake. It’s the inaugural season of this Canadian Bake Show, Eh! and our gal, young Grace, is a contestant. An accountant by day but a baker by obsession, Grace is determined to win. “It’s Destiny!” she proclaims. But she fails the audition (“No, I was supposed to win”, she howls). However, passing herself off as Lucy, a no-show at the auditions, she moves on to the finals in Toronto. As Lucy.
Written by and performing as Grace is Faly Mevamanana and a more animated, exuberant performer is hard to imagine: dressed in a puffy pink dress and wearing pink, low-heeled shoes with white bobby sox, Mevamanana’s Grace is just so darned cute with her wild curly hair and big-as-all-outdoors smile. But Grace, it turns out, is not really so cute or sweet; her need to win borders on the pathological and she will do anything to be crowned Canada’s Best Baker.
On stage with Mevamanana are Sharon Crandall, playing the gushy, over-the-top host of the show as well as Tricia, the bent-over grannie contestant who is always trying to ‘help’ Grace; and Andy Marie who plays Betty, Grace’s archrival as well as Chris (maybe a stoner), Nolan and Axel, the over-confident German baker. Marie shows lots of skill switching from character to character and adds tremendously to the show. I did, however, find her high-voice, squeaky delivery (as Betty) hard to catch at times. Nothing worse than hearing an audience laughing at a line you missed.
Where The Baking Show Show gets awkward is in its growing exploration of the reason for Grace’s go-for-broke ambition. Increasingly interspersed throughout the last third or half of the play is a voice-over of her father. “Not good enough, Gracie”; “Good. Good, Gracie But not good enough.” When Grace admits she has no friends, her father’s voice-over says, “Friends are for winners, Gracie”. “Stop relying on other people to fix your problems.” And the coup de grace: a reference to Grace’s mother leaving him as if it were Grace’s fault. Because the show has been a laugh-a-minute comedy bordering on farce, the father’s cruelty – the fuel for Grace’s drive for perfection – get laughs. But it’s not funny.
And so The Bake Show Show feels a little awkward, as if it doesn’t know what it wants to say or quite how to say it. However, there’s no doubt that, eventually, this quirky little comedy – if that’s what it really is – is about the soul-destroying cost of celebrity especially when it’s driven by parental abuse. Not funny.
Credit: Emily Cooper
Set and prop design by Julia Kim are perfect: everything bathed in pink and lavender from the checkerboard squares on the floor to the ruffles on the backstage. The contest judge – mustachioed Judge Judge – appears projected on the back wall. Lighting designer Jonathan Kim keeps everything pretty-in-pink except when things begin to fall apart.
Warning: you will get hungry with all that talk of food: bao, apple crumble coffee cake, miso butterscotch glaze, pavlova, dark chocolate cookies with cream cheese filling and so much more. A surprise, however, is in store.
Capably directed by Jasmine Chen, The Baking Show Show starts off sweet, proceeds to get less sweet and ends up – if not sour, then just sad.
[And for you bakers: here’s a recipe that a friend makes but that I have tried twice and had to throw out – twice. Possibly my most expensive flop: half a pound of butter, two packages of cream cheese and fresh blueberries. They looked beautiful but the bottom crust stuck impossibly to the non-stick (!) pan: www.the-girl-who-ate-everything.com/blueberry-lemon-cheesecake-bars]
