Bunny

March 2018

Bunny 

Bunny. By Hannah Moscovitch and Sarah Garton Stanley, Tarragon Theatre, Commissioned by the Stratford Festival. Mar. 2018. Tarragon Theatre, Toronto

I fully expected to be offended by this production. When we received our tickets they came with a disclaimer, telling the audience in advance that there was explicit sexual content in the play. I went only because I had to, but I am very glad that I did. The show was written in a first person/third person style that framed the life of a woman named Sorrel with her own third person narration about herself. She talks to the audience about her feeling of alienation, her fear and her desperation to fit in. As her story progresses, it is clear that she finds her identity, her role in society, through her sexual relationships with men. Her realization at the end of the play is that these men she has fought for desperately in an attempt to be “normal” were not what she was really looking for. She realizes that a friendship she has had since college is far deeper and more powerful than the relationships that she has had with men, and that she never needed to be normal in the first place. 

I found the message of this play powerful in our day and age, where most people are like Sorrel, seeing themselves as alienated and looking for life’s answers in their sexuality. I also loved the slightly stylistic way that the script was written, Sorrel is a professor of 19th century literature, and the script was reflective of this by being written in a similar style. As a lover of 19th century literature myself I found this to be delightful common ground with the character and a fun homage to beautiful works of literature. This play taught me not to trust my first impressions too much - I expected to be offended, but instead I met a broken, beautiful woman trying to find what we are all looking for - acceptance.