Moscovitch's drama ‘Red Like Fruit' explores power and memory in post-#MeToo era

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.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

Hamilton Spectator

2 hours ago

• Hamilton Spectator

Natalie Sue wins Leacock Medal for Humour for novel ‘I Hope This Finds You Well'

Natalie Sue's debut novel 'I Hope This Finds You Well' has won this year's Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. The $25,000 award is given to the best Canadian book of literary humour published in the previous year. The novel follows the story of an office worker in her early thirties who one day stumbles upon all of her colleagues' private emails and decides to use their gossip to help save her job. 'I Hope This Finds You Well' was published by HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. Sue is a Calgary-based author of Iranian and British descent who spent her early years living in western Canada. Runners-up, who received $5,000 each, were Greg Kearney for 'An Evening With Birdy O'Day,' about an aging hairstylist who lost connection with his childhood best friend when he left to pursue a pop music career, and Patricia J. Parsons for 'We Came From Away: That Summer on the Rock,' which follows one woman's attempt to reconnect her family with Newfoundland. This report by The Canadian Press was first published June 21, 2025.

Chicago Tribune

10 hours ago

• Chicago Tribune

Review: Giancarlo Guerrero steps into new Grant Park Music Fest role with a pair of genial and dynamic programs

Talk about a perfect storm. On Wednesday, Giancarlo Guerrero's much-fêted debut as principal conductor and artistic director of the Grant Park Music Festival was dampened by relentless rain. Audiences scrunched under the Jay Pritzker Pavilion fringe, only to play musical chairs dodging the structure's many (and ever-changing) leaky spots. When they weren't doing that, seat shuffles and squabbles competed with the evening's violin concerto. But if Guerrero appeared unflappable onstage, it's because he's been there before. He made his sophomore appearance with the orchestra in 2014 under nearly identical circumstances, down to the solo string showcase and contemporary American opener. Despite the lousy weather, that appearance impressed festival musicians enough to fast-track Guerrero to the top of their director wishlist a decade later. While last week's storm never erupted into thunder, musical lightning struck twice here with yet another exuberant, water-resistant stand by Guerrero on Wednesday, followed by a masterful account of Mahler's Symphony No. 1 on Friday. Wednesday's concert included two harbor works: 'An American Port of Call,' by Virginia-based composer Adolphus Hailstork, and Leonard Bernstein's 'On the Waterfront' suite. Conducting with his pointer fingers rather than a baton, and sporting a new goatee, Guerrero led a sparky, whistle-clean run of Hailstork's eight-minute curtain raiser. But when the music dissipated into quietude — recalling a boat drifting far off from shore, surrounded only by blue horizon — Guerrero guided the music with expansive ease. Bernstein's 'Waterfront' benefited from the same balance of gusto and intuitive pacing. Patrick Walle's horn solo up top sounded suspended in time, before an increasingly feral orchestra jerked us back to street level. Amid the ferocity, the Grant Parkers always sounded whetted and clean, moving through the works' shifting meters with fearsome precision. In the final windup to the end, electric energy gave way to ringing, Mussorgskyan grandeur. Between the Hailstork and Bernstein, Jeremy Black returned to the festival as both concertmaster and featured soloist, offering up the Mendelssohn Violin Concerto. Even the brunt of the evening's downpour couldn't wash away the strong impression left by this filigree, soulful performance. Black's sound in the opening theme and balladic second movement was sugared but never treacly. Meanwhile, the Allegro molto vivace coasted along serenely, Black's bel canto phrasing and pristine intonation never betraying its finger-flying briskness. Promisingly, Guerrero's orchestral accompaniment was every bit as tasteful. Negotiating solo string balance in the park is always just that — a negotiation — but Guerrero hit the sweet spot of clarity and restraint. The orchestra was able to be a bit more gutsy under Friday's soloist, Pacho Flores. The Venezuelan trumpeter has a sparkling sound, which he dispatched with doting attention to phrase and line in Arturo Márquez's lively, if unseasonal, 'Concierto de Otoño' ('Autumn Concerto'). The work was specifically composed for Flores in 2018, taking unabashed advantage of not just the trumpeter's lyricism but his gatling-gun articulation, unflappable stamina and chameleon flexibility. (He traded four different horns across the 20-minute piece: C and D trumpets in the outer movements, then a flugelhorn and soprano cornet in the middle.) Flores also knows how to work a crowd. Rather than shooting to the stratosphere in his third-movement cadenza, he crawled to the bottom of his range — an amusing subversion of trumpet tropes. He then turned his bell directly at Guerrero and playfully pppththhed at him through his horn, prompting a teasing 'what gives?' shrug from the conductor. That said, it's hard to endorse Márquez's concerto beyond a mere virtuoso vehicle. The orchestral backing is often trite, cycling through the same progressions for what feels like minutes at a time. If the concerto's many flavors of theme-and-variation were engrossing at all, it was entirely thanks to Friday's soloist and orchestra, both playing with tempera-rich color and joie d'vivre. For pops-adjacent music under a more skillful hand, look to Flores himself. He opened and closed his appearance with two self-penned numbers: 'Morocota' (named for a $20 Venezuelan coin) and 'Lábios Vermelhos' ('Red Lips'). Originally recording both with guitar accompaniment for a 2017 Deutsche Grammophon release, Flores sang through his horn with a suave melodiousness that would have done the Rat Pack proud, with just a shimmer of vibrato where it counted. His lush orchestral arrangements would have been right at home in that milieu, too. At one point in 'Lábios Vermelhos,' section trumpets got in on the fun, with a sneering little interjection. Yet another short, Latin-inspired curtain raiser opened the concert: 'Baião n' Blues,' by Chicago composer Clarice Assad. A staple of the Carlos Kalmar years, Assad's inclusion in Guerrero's opening week bodes well for the new festival chief's attention to local composers. Ultimately, though, this performance had some of the same early-season jitters as last week's opener, with a scraggly opening and subdivision disagreement among the violins. 'Baião n' Blues' already isn't Assad's most compellingly structured piece, but a more honed performance might have made a better case. While Mahler sought to depict the world's natural beauty and bizarre juxtapositions in his music, he perhaps didn't anticipate contending with throbbing helicopters, the squeal of a coach's whistle, and hot rods sputtering down Lake Shore Drive on Friday. The Grant Park corps rose above the usual downtown backing track with a fresh, focused Mahler 1. Guerrero cued the unearthly, whistling first bars with an ambiguous gesture that invited the orchestra to melt in freely. Offstage trumpets were piped through the crown of the pavilion stage, sounding mysteriously heaven-sent. When the theme arrived in the cellos, Guerrero maintained their levity and grace throughout the movement — and, in fact, throughout much of the piece, bringing an aerodynamic lightness even to the symphony's final cadence. Because Grant Park 'does things a little differently,' per Guerrero, Friday's performance reinserted Mahler's discarded 'Blumine' movement. Through a complex change of hands, the only surviving manuscript copy of 'Blumine' ended up in in New Haven, Connecticut, where it was rediscovered as part of the Mahler renaissance of the 1960s. If 'Blumine' is heard at all, it's usually as a standalone piece, for good reason: It's arresting but nearly always out-of-place amid the lustiness of the rest of the symphony. Friday's performance gave the same impression — gauzy and subtle, but stopping short of the richness and emotional abandon that would make a better case for its inclusion. Elsewhere, other idiosyncratic touches intrigued and often convinced: more perky staccatos by oboist Alex Liedtke, orchestral accents like bitter twists of a knife in the funeral march, and a slower reading of the klezmer-band interludes. In all, it endorsed Guerrero's warhorse chops as enthusiastically as his new-music acumen. Rain or shine, Grant Park is looking like a fair place to be under his baton.

New York Post

11 hours ago

• New York Post

New York residents shelled out $179.1 million on OnlyFans last year

New Yorkers shelled out roughly $179 million on OnlyFans in 2024, a new study found — far below the per-capita peak spending in the Mountain State. West Virginia, home to country roads and mountain mamas, was No. 1 in the U.S. in money spent on the sexy site per 10,000 residents — $116,313 annually, according to search engine OnlyFinder's 'The United States of Lonelyfans,' the first to delve into a state-level analysis of the London-based subscription site. Big Apple residents, by comparison, shelled out $88,646 annually, making it 35th in the country. Advertisement Nevada came in second, followed by Colorado, Illinois and Iowa. 3 Sophie Rain was the OnlyFans star most searched by New Yorkers. Sophie Rain/ Instagram The least interested state in the union was Mississippi, with a mere $54,728 spent annually. Louisiana, Arkansas, Alabama and Alaska also ranked in the bottom five. Advertisement In New York, 83% of OnlyFans users are men — registering approximately $148.7 million of the state's $179.1 million annual spending — while 17% are women, who account for $30.4 million. Married people make up 47% of OnlyFans subscribers in the Empire State. Meanwhile, 36% percent of users are in the 25-34 age range. 3 Nearly 50% of OnlyFans users in New York are married, according to the study. romaset – The study also revealed which OnlyFans stars get searched the most, and Sophie Rain — who revealed to The Post last week that she already made $23 million this year — takes the New York cake, with over 246,000 monthly searches. Advertisement 3 Buffalo spent more on OnlyFans per capita than the Big Apple, which finished fourth in the state, according to the study. AFP via Getty Images Rain's cousin Camilla Araujo grabbed the second most-searched spot, with more than 110,000. New Jersey ranked 33rd, with $90,724 spent annually per 10,000 residents, while Connecticut landed in 43rd, with $81,941.