Rosamund Small’s Vitals, is now receiving a revival production featuring a gripping performance by real-world medical doctor Janet McMordie.
Before I detail the many good reasons to see this show at Factory Theatre…
It’s important to note that the content advisory in the show program may not fully prepare audiences for what unfolds. Even at the risk of spoilers, you should know what to expect before experiencing (or choosing not to experience) this show. Vitals discusses suicide, self-harm, abuse, assault, trauma and neglect—at great length. And it includes detailed descriptions of suicide methods.
At the opening night performance, this information was clearly articulated in a pre-show introduction, which was delivered only after the audience was already seated and the house lights were down. By that point, leaving was not a simple option for anyone triggered by the idea of such graphic content. So if you are someone with lived experience of mental health struggles, or who has been affected personally by suicide, please bear in mind that the experience of watching Vitals could prove quite overwhelming (and difficult to extricate yourself from).
Now back to the show…
The intensity I am warning you about is, in many ways, the point of the show. Small’s Dora Award-winning solo play traces the psychological erosion of Anna, a paramedic who is navigating the relentless and crushing demands of emergency medicine. Vitals is a pointed first-person critique of a care structure that relies on compassion, but does shockingly little to create and sustain it. The play asks what happens when society’s most urgent helpers, responders like Anna, are left without help for themselves first
Crafted from real interviews with frontline workers, the play enacts the effect of accumulating trauma. 911 calls stack up. The schedule grinds on with a punishing “six weeks on, six weeks off” regularity that offers no true reprieve. Suffering becomes routine, and the system’s supports feel distressingly meagre.
Anna’s work partners are one challenge. She fares slightly better when partnered with the empathetic and experienced medic Amir, rather than her other shift partner Harry, whose rashness results in botched care or yields additional complications. And even Anna’s psychiatrist registers less as a clinician than as a well-meaning but ineffectual presence, offering cookies and muffins like an indulgent uncle, rather than meaningful intervention for her mounting stress.
Of course, Vitals isn’t just about one paramedic’s exhaustion: it points to a wider crisis in emergency care where burnout, overcrowding, and administrative overload threaten both workers and patients. So it feels entirely fitting that this play marks Dr McMordie’s stage show debut—one that should herald much more to come.
McMordie is a practising frontline physician, a professional actor, and the host of the award-winning Second Act Actors podcast. As such, she brings an authority that cannot be easily manufactured, and which collapses the distance between lived experience and performance. During the pandemic, she recognized the burnout she herself was suffering, and enrolled in online acting classes which were offered free of charge to medical professionals by the Second City Toronto. During these classes, she reconnected with her love of the arts and reclaimed a latent talent in acting, which launched her on the path to becoming a professional actor alongside her medical practice. (Read more about this in a previous profile with Sesaya Arts Magazine.)
Vitals is a natural extension of McMordie’s now-thriving acting career. Her work in Vitals is grounded, compelling, and emotionally transparent, moving fluidly from dark humour to dread to nightmarish horror. She captures Anna’s gradual depletion with a taut restraint and incredulity that are consistently compelling. Her preparation for the role, including ride-alongs with Peel Region paramedics, is evident in the physical and procedural specificity she brings to each moment, lending the production a brutal, unvarnished realism.
Director Alaine Hutton (of duo Lester Trips) makes the disciplined and effective choice to strip the stage nearly bare. With minimal props and a set consisting of just two chairs at the back of the stage and a tub to the side, there is no visual distraction. So we have nowhere to look but at McMordie, creating a pressure-cooker intimacy that mirrors Anna’s own growing claustrophobia. Sharpening the text’s docu-theatrical impact, the audience is forced into proximity with experiences that are often kept at a distance, out of public view. This is a demanding, but also a purposeful, watch.
Notably, each performance begins with a Frontline Acoustic Prelude which takes place in the lobby. This performance of live music by healthcare workers ushers audiences into the world of the play, while honouring the communities it represents. And the show is being produced as a nonprofit, with proceeds directed toward Frontline Families Canada, an organization that supports the families of fallen first responders.
Vitals is a solid, serious and affecting offering, in which McMordie more than holds her own. Audiences forewarned about its subject matter should definitely see Vitals: they will appreciate the thoughtfulness and urgency of the entire production and the issues it wrestles with. And they will inevitably take haunting images and difficult realities home—to wrestle with themselves.
Vitals is presented by Second Act Productions at Factory Theatre’s Studio space until May 10, 2026. Select performances feature Post-Show Talkbacks with frontline workers, mental health professionals, artists, and community voices in a guided conversation. Tickets are available at factorytheatre.ca.
© Arpita Ghosal, Sesaya Arts Magazine 2026
