When you sit down to watch Octet, you don’t realize it, but you’ve been preparing for years. Every notification check, every doom-scroll, every rabbit hole of likes and comments has been homework for this remarkable piece of musical theatre, which holds up an incisive, uncomfortably accurate mirror to our digital dependencies.
Dave Malloy, whose epic Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 dazzled Toronto audiences in Crow’s and Mirvish productions over the past two years, returns to Toronto stages in a musical that could not hardly be more different, yet is equally innovative in execution. Octet takes place in a church basement where eight internet addicts gather for a peculiar form of group therapy … but what unfolds is far from conventional, plot-driven musical theatre. Instead of a traditional narrative, this co-production by Crow’s Theatre, Soulpepper and the Musical Stage Company serves up an exquisitely tuneful, yet almost entirely plotless treatise on our collective enslavement and stupidification by technology.
The show’s genius begins with Joshua Quinlan’s set design. The show is performed with the audience on three sides. The one non-audience facing wall presents the trappings of a nondescript church basement, in front of which are a few chairs scattered around an open floor area. This basement floor has probably seen church meetings, meals, rummage sales and countless other community connections over the years … but it’s also a digital grid, whose squares will illuminate in response to the pressure and presence of the characters. A manifestation of the inescapability of our hybrid existence, this analog-digital fusion is the perfect canvas for Chris Abraham’s masterfully restrained direction. Where his work in Great Comet was a whirlwind of constantly shifting focus and movement that flowed into and out of the theatre and the audience, here he keeps the action contained and our attention focused on this floor space. Thanks to Cameron Carver’s smart, tight choreography, there’s movement aplenty, but it’s happening within and among these characters. Keeping them squarely in front of us this way amplifies the intensity of each confession and connection.
The eight, each of whom embodies a different digital affliction, take turns baring their souls in songs that are gorgeous, yet garish. We meet doom-scrollers, conspiracy theorists, gaming addicts, and social media obsessives: each tells their story in devastatingly efficient and expert, playful and sorrowful first-person accounts. The show particularly excels in its treatment of political polarization, managing to anatomize the technological mechanisms that drive us apart, without ever picking or even enacting a side. The cast – Alicia Ault (Velma), Damien Atkins (Henry), Andrew Broderick (Toby), Giles Tomkins (Ed), Jacqueline Thair (Jessica), Zorana Sadiq (Paula), Hailey Gillis (Karly), and Ben Carlson (Marvin) – delivers performances of stunning technical precision and emotional depth. Under music director Ryan deSouza’s masterful guidance, their voices achieve extraordinary richness and resonance, making us marvel … and forcing us to listen.
The complete absence of musical instruments is remarkable and delicious. Octet’s clever score manifests through the human voice alone: the exceptional ensemble percussing, harmonizing, and weaving their voices sinuously into intricate, exquisite patterns whose words and melody cut right through rationality. After all, we already know how bad our technological addictions are for us. We know that our phones and our social media are built to trap us. That they’re making us stupid. That we’re wasting thousands of hours on them that we will never get back. So these mesmerizing, meme-able songs weaponize human talent to bypass the brain and strike directly at our gut, our guilt … and our guile.
They feature devastatingly precise summaries of our various digital ailments, complete with the self-justifying talk tracks we use to maintain our habits. And together, they form a deeply sobering, smilingly devastating rebuke of every single one of us with a phone in our pocket or purse – who could easily be part of this kind of support group.
Yet the show is not a hopeless downward spiral, and it never becomes a joyless finger-wagging exercise about technology’s evils. There is no resolution, of course, but there are some green shoots. In a transcendent moment near the show’s conclusion, Alicia Ault’s Velma delivers a heart-quickening reminder of the internet’s original promise – its power to bridge loneliness and forge genuine connections across vast distances. And the final hymn (which is performed in gorgeous a cappella harmonies reminiscent of the choir performances I grew up with at Toronto’s Kingston Road United Church) holds out hope that we are stronger and more tuneful together – IRL – singing our own parts with others.
But as we file out of the theatre, we reach for our phones with practiced automaticity. We just can’t help it. Octet has laid bare an unsettling but uncomplicated truth: in our quest to stay connected, we’ve forgotten how to truly harmonize.
So then the real performance begins: in the space between reaching for our screens and choosing, perhaps, to let our hands fall empty at our sides.
Octet runs until November 2 at Crow’s Theatre. Tickets are available at crowstheatre.com
© Scott Sneddon Sesaya Arts Magazine 2025
