Arts & Culture

What: Big Stuff
Where: Crow’s Theatre,
When: Now, until Sun., Dec. 8
Highlight: Improv effortlessly woven into narrative
Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: Two pros deliver fast-paced, funny and profound look at relationships and grief.

REAL-LIFE MARRIED  comedy couple Naomi Snieckus (Pretty Hard Cases, Mr. D) and Matthew Baram (The Umbrella Academy, Painkiller) deliver a fast-paced, funny two-hander, Big Stuff, that cleverly explores a relationship 10 years in and also deftly contemplates grief. It’s nuanced, wise, sometimes hilarious and never wallows in easy emotion.

Snieckus and Baram are confident pros who ease in and out of playing themselves and their characters, propelling a flashback narrative, conversing with the audience and each other, and drawing inspiration from notes gathered from attendees at the beginning of the show.

The stage features a cleverly assembled mass of packing boxes sprinkled with bric-a-brac and keepsakes — or junk according to one of the couple.

Snieckus and Baram expertly explore the “opposites attract” trope that will resonate with many couples with one partner more impulsive and emotional — Snieckus — and the other reserved and self-identified “rational — Baram.

These differences play out in their attitudes to “stuff” and are used to engage the audience as we are asked early to declare which camp we are in. Audience engagement is part of the show, not interrupting the narrative but providing “check-ins” as we move through the story, connecting us with the performers. Periodically, the actors will pull an audience suggestion from boxes the audience filled earlier, briefly digressing as Snieckus or Baram gently questions them about their pick. We’ve all been asked to list an object in our homes that reminds us of someone.

This process of memory brings actors and the audience together and, like the improv moments in the show, is fresh; therefore, somehow more intimate each performance. And these departures never bring the tale to a full stop or pull us out of the story but are expertly woven into the narrative, elements of the conversations later dropped into the tale, familiar work for these skilled improvisers.

Two parallel moments are being shared as we see the couple in present day battle over what keepsakes to keep as they process dealing with their recently deceased parents’ possessions as well as their own, ever-growing collections of “stuff.”

Through flashback scenes, we see the pair paralyzed with paranoia at a border crossing into Canada as they return home in a packed U-Haul after an actors’ interlude chasing work in L.A.

Another sweet series of scenes sees the couple falling in love as the two young actors meet while working at Toronto’s Second City, this memory sparked by a Second City ball cap they are debating tossing in the thrash.

Throughout it all, discussions and memories of grief weave through the tale like smoke from candles — present but not overwhelming as both recall passed parents and moments of intimate connection with them.

For a show not afraid to explore tough topics, Big Stuff  is surprisingly uplifting, even empowering, as the actors get the audience to engage and share their own, sometimes sweet, often complicated memories. Some of these moments border on group therapy — in a good way. At the first of his recent Toronto concerts, Bruce Springsteen said, “Grief is the price we pay for having loved well.” Big Stuff expertly explores this bittersweet truth, raising hope for us all in the process.