Maev Beaty, Rosemary Dunsmore and Brianna Rodrigues in Here For Now Theatre’s 2026 production of Suzannah. Photo by Ann Baggley
By Galen Simmons
Here For Now Theatre’s final play of its 2026 summer season, Suzannah, is a journey into the mind of a woman losing her grasp on the present as she processes the grief she feels following the loss of her husband and attempts to reconcile the complicated feelings she has and had for the man.
In this Canadian premiere production of playwright Jon Fosse’s play, as translated by Dr. May-Brit Akerholt and directed by Peter Hinton-Davis, the present-day Suzannah – the Old Suzannah (Rosemary Dunsmore) – is lost in her own mind following the death of her husband, renowned writer Henrik Ibsen.
She speaks with Ibsen as though he is still in the room in which he worked for most of their lives together and wonders when both he and their son, Sigurd, will join her for her birthday dinner. At first, just as Suzannah seems to float between the realizations of her present and the memories of her past, the audience isn’t entirely sure who the old woman on stage is speaking with and whether they are alive or dead, real or imagined.
Though she continually comes back to the present, as if to remind herself Ibsen is no longer present in the home they shared and she has a duty to do away with his clothes and other personal possessions, she is carried back to the past by waves of grief as she grapples with who her husband was and how he treated her.
As she explores those feelings, her past selves join her on stage to help her remember her husband for who he truly was at two very important stages of her life. First, the Young Suzannah (Brianna Rodrigues), joins her older self to explore how and why she fell in love with Ibsen when they first met, and then the Middle-Aged Suzannah (Maev Beaty) joins her older and younger selves onstage to delve into the complicated feelings she felt when she learned her husband had fathered another child with one of their housekeepers around the time of Sigurd’s seventh birthday.
In all three memories, Suzannah is waiting for Ibsen to appear – to take her to a ball on their first date, to join her for Sigurd’s birthday dinner and to join her for her birthday dinner after his death. The feelings she has in each of these moments seem to ebb and flow. What at first seems to be an old woman talking in circles with herself, repeating the same things again and again, gradually reveals itself as an exploration of her grief, delving deeper into her memory and subconscious to help her process a lifetime of anger, sadness and disappointment alongside that feeling of great loss.
The symbolism represented onstage in this production, both with the actors who play Suzannah’s past selves and in the props and set design – candles being blown out as she reconciles with her past selves, for example – brings her emotional turmoil into the physical world without being over the top or drawing too much attention away from Suzannah herself.
The way the script draws the audience in with uncertainty and concern for Suzannah, and the way the actors only acknowledge each other when Suzannah makes an important realization about herself, her husband, or their relationship result in a satisfying conclusion to the story without actually showing Suzannah moving on with her life.
She looks forward to when her son and his family will come visit on the weekend, but we don’t get to see Suzannah take that next step toward healing. All we know when the stage goes dark is Suzannah has confronted her past and has come out the other side.
Suzannah ran at Here For Now Theatre from Aug. 19-30.
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