Review by Quincy Russel • Halifax • 2025-04-30
At the top of the staged reading of PEACHES, written by Elio Zarrillo and directed by Annie Valentina with dramaturgy by Erik Berg, we face a stool and two music stands, in front of black stage curtains carefully adorned with post-it notes, suggesting a workshop presentation.
In a 2023 interview with the Playwrights Guild of Canada, Zarillo says of the script, “I am exploring the writing of something that terrifies me on multiple levels.” Prince (Loren Baldwin), is trying to pass as cis at work with a farmer, Greg (Theofani Pitsiavas) who is trying to pass as a stereotypical, emotionally illiterate “dude”, but the script reveals a surprisingly complicated relationship. In a meta-theatrical twist, these two characters collaborate in the performance of a play that is closer to home than either of them had imagined.
With themes, subject and point-of-view rooted in a trans perspective, PEACHES is a welcome response to the systemic lack of programming of its kind.
PEACHES has much to offer in Zarillo’s keen eye for comedy, poetry, and empathy, but in its premature staging at OUTFest it's easy to lose sight of its intended themes. Stealing attention away from the script, the blocking ensures that unfortunately, the show’s takeaway is the lasting image of spoiled post-it note “peaches” slipping through Loren Baldwin and Theofani Pitsiavas’ hands, rather than a deeper understanding of the play.
With themes, subject, and point-of-view rooted in a trans perspective, PEACHES is a welcome response to the systemic lack of programming of its kind. PEACHES was funded by the National Queer & Trans Playwriting Unit, the “...first ever entirely 2SLGBTQIA+, virtual playwriting unit…” a collaboration of 10 theatre companies and organizations across the country, led by Zee Zee Theatre, whose goal is to generate “… a canon of new Canadian intersectional plays being developed for production”.
In a 2023 interview with Theatre Projects Manitoba, Zarillo says: “With where it's at right now, I hope that PEACHES will have people thinking about roads to healing, how they are not always obvious and are typically far from linear, and how we really can't walk them alone. We need community, we need relationship.”
In this time of fear and political polarization, I can’t agree more.
Written by: Elio Zarrillo
Director: Annie Valentina
Dramaturgy: Erik Berg
Performers: Loren Baldwin and Theofani Pitsiavas
