Tarragon Theatre: Bremen Town (World Premiere). Written & directed by Gregory Prest; cast: Tatjana Cornij, Oliver Dennis, Farhang Ghajar, Sheila McCarthy, Veronica Hortigüela, Dan Mousseau, Nancy Palk, William Webster. Continues until October 26, 2025 at Tarragon Theatre; tickets here.
The world is a terrible place, full of awful people doing awful things, everyone gets old, and everything ends.
And yet…
That is essentially the direction of Bremen Town, a Tarragon Theatre production that stars Nancy Palk as Frau Esel.
Set in what could be 19th century Germany, Frau Esel has been the uber-dedicated housekeeper of the prominent Völksenhaus, in a town just outside Hanover for 45 years. As the story opens, she’s been unceremoniously canned by a new mistress of the mansion.
She’s setting out for Bremen to go live with her son, who she says is a musician, but of course there are mishaps and detours along the way, and a parade of characters who join her, at least for a time, including bumbling magician Herr Hund (Oliver Davis), would-be musician Herr Katze (William Webster), and Frau Henne (Sheila McCarthy).
Their paths cross with many others who offer both comedic and darker moments to their journey in a blend of the over the top and the sharply realistic.
While this version is a world premiere, Bremen Town began its life as a project through the Soulpepper Academy. It was performed in an initial version during the Next Stage Festival in 2023.
Tip: If you didn’t catch the connection between the names and the title of the play, there’s a handy reference here.
The Play
The play opens with Tatjana Cornij (Vogel) who serves as intermittent narrator and musician, playing the accordion to heighten the emotions of the scenes as they play out. Cornij composed the music, and her narratives sometimes act as a kind of conscience to Frau Esel. When Frau Esel repeatedly mentions going to stay with her son in Bremen, for example, she asks her, “Will he know you?”
Frau Esel squirms for a moment, tellingly.
The story veers from silly physical comedy to the blackest of black humour. Oliver Dennis’s magician with money problems has a cute bit with a fish that recurs to audience laughs. A few scenes later, adult children want to sell their mother.
Animals… do not fare so well in the play, let’s just say.
Like the original folktales that the Brothers Grimm collected and compiled, and unlike the often sanitized movie versions, it runs the gamut; whimsical to tragic, truthful to fanciful.
The play is full of telling details — a kite festival, Herr Hund’s magic tricks, crowns of flowers. While the stage is virtually bare except for a couple of rugs, intricate costumes by Nancy Perrin and a colourful array of props flesh out the scenes. Actors on stage flew the kites and knelt to create the ruffling of Frau Esel’s skirts in the wind, bits of stagecraft that added to the fairytale mode of storytelling, rather than detract from its effect.
Logan Raju Cracknell created interesting lighting effects that added to the folktale vibe. The Dora-nominated designer’s starry night effect was particularly magical.
Performances
Nancy Palk’s Frau Esel is the emotional heart of the meandering and fanciful storyline, and she offers a nuanced portrait of a woman confronting the idea of her redundancy in a world that no longer seems to need her. She’s led a life full of purpose and dedicated to results, only to have the rug slipped out from under her.
She’s bitter and biting, but still possesses a heart that can be reached, and hopes that can be ignited. Frau Esel is any of us confronting aging in a world that doesn’t value what the elderly can bring to it, and she says the hard parts out loud unflinchingly.
Stage and screen veteran Sheila McCarthy adds a bright note to the production as the not so slightly befuddled Frau Henne. Her musical contributions to the story (without giving much away) are one of the show’s comedic highlights, and together with Herr Hund and Herr Katze, she adds some of the sweeter emotional moments to the mix.
The cast is uniformly strong, and special kudos to Farhang Ghajar, Veronica Hortigüela, and Dan Mousseau, who juggled a variety of roles (including non-human) with a well tuned sense of comedy.
Final Thoughts
In Western society, the norm is for the elderly to largely disappear. Once you’re no longer of use to society, you become an inconvenience. As the old fairytale about Bremen tells us, it’s a theme that has resonated throughout centuries.
Frau Esel’s journey may not be heroic in a traditional sense, and may leave ideas and issues unresolved, but in it, Gregory Prest has created a bittersweet messiness that’s akin to what we experience in real life.
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