There is something innately unsettling about the moors. In our mind’s eye, we see these open, uncultivated and uneven upland areas as vast, solitary, windswept … and wild. This charged landscape, which promises natural beauty married to danger, gives Jen Silverman’s The Moors its atmosphere, its pulse … and its sense of unease.
A circumspect (and almost tantalizingly spoiler-free) conversation with Dora Award-winning actors Raquel Duffy and Lindsey Middleton makes clear that the duo feel no unease about Riot King’s Toronto premiere of Silverman’s dramedy, which they star in. Indeed, they seem tickled by the theatrical challenge and delighted by the play’s subversive exploration of love, desperation, and the dangerous desire to be seen.
Set on the aforementioned remote English moors, the play follows a young governess (Blessing Adedijo), who arrives at a decaying manor expecting to find employment and order. Instead, she encounters the master’s two spinster sisters, Agatha (Duffy) and Huldey (Middleton), whose volatile dynamic—part rivalry, part dependence, part buried ache—will drive forward the production’s gothic tension, unexpected humour, and shocking heartbreak. Along for the ride are a maid (Erin Humphrey) who may or may not be two different people, and – get ready for it – a lovelorn mastiff (Jack Copland) yearning for an injured moor-hen (Heeyun Park 박희윤).
The promised child never appears, and what unfolds instead is a darkly comic and increasingly surreal study of control, desire, and the instability of identity. Directed by Bryn Kennedy, the production leans into a moody Victorian world which may feel less like the past than a funhouse mirror of the present.
The unique voice of Jen Silverman
A three-time MacDowell Fellow and two-time Susan Smith Blackburn Prize finalist, Silverman has built an international reputation for crafting bold and idiosyncratically comic plays that stretch the theatrical form while remaining deeply human. Their play The Roommate appeared on Broadway in 2024 starring Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone, and Toronto audiences may recall the fascinating Witch from earlier in Soulpepper’s current season.
Silverman’s work has long interrogated power, gender, and desire. Here, those concerns are filtered through both Victorian constraint and contemporary anxiety to address the play’s central preoccupation: who gets to be seen in such stories, how, and at what cost. Silverman twists Brontë-era gothic tropes into something decidedly queerer, stranger, and recognizably modern. “There’s a bit of danger, there’s a bit of vastness and loneliness, there’s some beauty, and there’s some mystery,” smiles Middleton cryptically.
Duffy stresses how Silverman begins with the emotional world found in the Brontë sisters’ novels, particularly the constrained lives and unspoken desires of women in the Victorian era, but “magnifies it and modernizes it,” bringing into sharp focus a longing “that is intangible or unnameable.” That restless, inchoate desire manifests in the show as “a desperation for change and transformation,” Duffy continues, before noting how the characters’ isolation sharpens that impulse. Removed from society, they are left to confront themselves — and each other — without mediation.
Dark comedy rooted in Victorian times
But while the play’s concerns are existential, its tone is anything but solemn. Both actors emphasize its precision as a dark comedy. “It’s very funny,” Middleton chuckles. “When you think, ‘Victorian era,’ you don’t necessarily think ‘comedy,’ but I find this piece so funny: a dark humour, but that’s definitely my favorite kind of comedy.” Duffy concurs, marvelling at how well the humour operates on the page, as well as in performance: in a rare occurrence, “I did laugh out loud when I was reading it!”
At the centre of the play is the relationship between sisters Agatha and Huldey. “I would say it’s very fractured,” Duffy reflects. “There is a barrier between these two.” “They see the world extremely differently,” agrees Middleton, noting the tension that can often exist between siblings shaped by the same environment, yet pulled toward opposing worldviews. More broadly, Silverman’s figures begin as recognizable archetypes, but then slip out of alignment. “They’re taking these tropes, and turning them around and twisting them,” Duffy notes. “And they do it in fantastic, surprising, fabulous ways that are hilarious, and yet also hit on something that is not a way we’ve ever seen these characters.”
The familiar becomes first unfamiliar and then revelatory — forcing the audience to reconsider what these figures are even allowed to want, or to become. In keeping with this idea, language itself becomes a site of critique. For instance, the term “spinster,” casually applied, carries historical weight that the production refuses to neutralize. “What a fascinating term to call a woman,” observes Duffy: “I find it so juicy… what that means, and what it meant then.”
Meeting the present moment
Of course, contemporary relevance is a big part of Riot King’s interest in the piece. And paradoxically, that relevance begins with the Victorian-era setting. In the play, the house is a site of pressure, but even the cavernous moors that surround it offer no relief. “There’s such a vastness,” muses Duffy. “You’re alone… There’s nothing around.” And Middleton links that isolation directly to our current collective disconnection and loneliness: “You see that isolation in each character. It’s a very modern epidemic.”
And while the company chose The Moors because they gravitate toward work that excites them, Middleton sees how that work is part of a broader pattern: in recent years, “the Toronto theatre scene… has been attracted to shows that are playing within an older setting with modern themes, female-led.” The Moors fits that trajectory perfectly — and pushes further, all the way into absurdity, with talking animals, abrupt tonal shifts, and surreal intrusions that disrupt naturalism at every turn.
“This is a theatre show,” Middleton says wryly. “There is a lot going on. There are magical things that happen!” And this is not empty whimsy, but a destabilization that mirrors the characters’ own disorientation. “You will be surprised”, she promises. And this unpredictability makes the play come alive for audiences, who will find they are invited not just to watch – but to grapple. “I’m very excited to see how people react” and interact in the “post-show chat,” smiles Middleton. And Duffy is equally enthusiastic, especially given Silverman’s acuity across generations: “They just get it… they get older women… I don’t know how they do it!”
There’s something innately unsettling about The Moors. It’s thrilling for the circumspect Duffy and Middleton to ply their craft in its vast, solitary, untamed space – but to discover why, you’ll need to venture yourself into its windswept wildness.
The Moors runs at The Theatre Centre from April 3–19, 2026. Tickets are available at thetheatrecentre.org.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
