TORONTO — A seasoned storyteller whose work often probes the complexities of consent and shades of truth, Hannah Moscovitch seems compelled to search for deeper meanings in both her plays and real life.
There’s rich significance, she suggests, in bringing her latest meditation on gender and power to a renowned Toronto theatre company once inextricably linked to allegations of sexual misconduct.
The celebrated playwright points out that “Red Like Fruit” hits Soulpepper several years after its co-founder and artistic director Albert Schultz resigned amid allegations of impropriety dating back years.
"They're trying to combat their own legacy,” Moscovitch says of being presented by Soulpepper, in collaboration with the Luminato Festival.
Moscovitch’s two-hander centres on a journalist whose investigation into a case of domestic violence leads her to reconsider the significance of her own past experiences.
Michelle Monteith plays the journalist Lauren, whose doubts about her own memory have her turning to a male character, Luke, played by David Patrick Flemming, to recount her own story back to her. The audience plays witness to Lauren's reaction to hearing someone else present details of her life, a twist on the unreliable narrator trope that raises questions about whose stories get told and whose voice gets heard.
Moscovitch, who visited similar themes in her Governor General’s Award-winning play “Sexual Misconduct of the Middle Classes,” notes her first-ever show at Soulpepper comes after a #MeToo reckoning that included pressure to address long-standing inequities in the theatre world.
She credits current artistic director Weyni Mengesha with leading that charge.
“She's entirely changed that institution. I'm so admiring of her programming and her art and I think that she has already completely obliterated any legacy from Albert Schultz," says Moscovitch.
Four actresses sued Schultz in January 2018, claiming he groped them, exposed himself, pressed against them or otherwise behaved inappropriately. Schultz resigned and denied the allegations, saying he would defend himself. The lawsuits were settled that summer with undisclosed terms.
Mengesha is equally effusive in describing Halifax-based Moscovitch as a “brave” artist willing to tackle difficult topics.
Mengesha says she flew to Halifax last year to preview “Red Like Fruit” as it prepared for its world premiere at Bus Stop Theatre, quickly deciding it was important to bring it to Soulpepper.
"She explores things that are tough to talk about, like shame and definitely our own accountability as far as how we believe women or don't believe women,” Mengesha says.
"It's so personal and it's so honest. And what I love about her work is that it's a slow burn in some ways. It's always entertaining and really enjoyable to watch, but the effects of it – you'll be considering it days after.”
“Red Like Fruit” is directed by Moscovitch’s husband, Christian Barry, who traces “a direct line” from its themes to those of “Sexual Misconduct,” which told of an affair between a married, middle-aged professor and his 19-year-old student. It's currently playing off-Broadway with Hugh Jackman and Ella Beatty.
Barry suspects an advantage in being married to the playwright of such charged fare, and he confesses they each have a hard time putting their creative projects aside at the end of the day – work talk will invade conversations at the dinner table or pop up during school drop-off for their son.
Such familiarity is especially handy in directing “Red Like Fruit,” he says, recalling multiple conversations with Moscovitch about her own eureka moments over past encounters.
“There's a lot of unspoken understanding between us about the subtext of what she's writing about. And I think ultimately, when you're sharing things that are this intimately connected with lived experiences, you just want to trust that they're going to be handled with care,” says Barry, artistic director of Halifax’s 2b theatre, which marks its 25th anniversary this June.
“And so she has trust in our relationship and in my ability to be able to see not just the text, but the subtext. Not just what's going on, but what it means to her personally and what it means to things that she's lived through that might be similar to what the characters are experiencing.”
Moscovitch says “Red Like Fruit” is not autobiographical but is partly informed by unsettling experiences she’s had in a male-dominated creative sphere.
”Having been in the theatre community in Toronto in the 2000s, I would say that a certain amount of sexual misconduct was the price of admission,” says Moscovitch.
She says it's taken years to acknowledge and unpack problematic encounters in her own past, which she'd previously laughed off as a joke when recounting to others.
"Culture was informing how we were thinking about our own experiences, and we were both diminishing them and being silenced about them. And I think it creates real confusion, or it did for me,” she says.
“Your first thought is, I'm so lucky nothing ever happened to me. And then you're like, 'Wait a second.... Every experience I've had actually, like, directly contradicts that,'" she says.
"And then you start to go into it – You're like, was that bad or wasn't it bad? Is that just part of growing up? Is that trauma or is that experience?”
“Red Like Fruit” begins with a preview Wednesday and opens Thursday.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 28, 2025.
Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press
