To ensure their survival as a species, periodical cicadas (as opposed to annual cicadas) use a strategy known as predator sedation. It involves spending most of their lives underground as nymphs and only surfacing to lay eggs every 13 or 17 years. In this way, a large wave of periodical cicadas greatly reduces the likelihood of aligning with that of their predators, who are typically born in two-, three-, four-, and five-year cycles.
David Yee references this biological adaptation in his new eco-thriller cicadas, and it doubles as a metaphor for how the narrative develops. Several storylines bustle beneath the surface, gradually making their way to the audience.
Janie (Monica Dottor) and Trim (Ryan Hollyman) have toured multiple houses before arriving at one in the Trinity Bellwoods area of Toronto. Despite their realtor’s warnings, the couple insists that this house is where they want to raise their child. As they work to transform their new house into a home, it becomes increasingly apparent that the couple, much like the residents before them, are not entirely welcome.
The house’s basement door, and the world it portends, loom heavy in the play. Director Nina Lee Aquino has realized a world that feels entirely convincing in its brooding hauntedness. She realizes the moments of magic and surrealism that are so central to Yee’s storytelling. An ominous light similar to something one might see in the X-Files glows and pulses from behind the basement door. (Lighting design is by Michelle Ramsay.) The soundscape toggles between eerie and lush, establishing the basement as a portal between the natural and supernatural. Live musicians — Amhal Arulanandam (cello), Marc Blouin (clarinet and bass clarinet), Nathan Petitpas (percussion), and Wesley Shen (piano) — are cleverly hidden on stage, allowing their music to fill the theatre.
cicadas began as a collaborative experiment between Yee and composer Chris Thornborrow where, as they share in their creators’ note, they “wrote in tandem, using music to inspire text and text to inspire music.” The synergy of this experiment, commissioned by NAC English Theatre and Orchestra, is intimate and rich. The music does not merely support the script but, rather, feels like another living, breathing character.
Those familiar with Yee’s work may recognize many traits from his other plays in cicadas: interwoven, surreal storylines moving across time and space (reminiscent of carried away on the crest of a way and paper series); climate anxiety (carried away); a preoccupation with the intersection of science and faith (carried away); and a deep reverence for poetry (among men). Yee continues to contemplate these themes in cicadas and the eco-thriller, as their vessel, offers a fresh appeal.
Jawon Kang’s stunning set and costume design beautifully captures the complexity of Yee’s story. The set not only depicts a house intent on evicting its tenants, but also creates powerful moments across the basement staircase, with one character nervously waiting downstairs while the other waits at the threshold. The house delivers several messages to Janie and Trim but he, in particular, appears unable to receive them. Waters instantaneously flood the basement, then retreat just as quickly. People go missing. The house begins to sink. The house also appears to be haunting Janie, who Dottor masterfully depicts as a woman slowly unravelling before reaching a tipping point toward the end of the first act.
Interactions with several secondary characters, all played by Ellora Patnaik, punctuate Janie and Trim’s relationship. Through costume changes and her exceptional delivery and physicality, Patnaik ensures that there is no confusion between the realtor, Janie’s mother Adeline, a cicada, a home inspector, and Flower, a self-proclaimed “spiritual doula” who Janie invites into the house to communicate with the spirits. In the first act, humorous exchanges between the couple and Patnaik’s many characters provide levity.
In the second act, the ecological and mathematical underpinnings of the story, largely buried until this point, begin to surface. Hauntings (of people and land), climate anxiety, existential uncertainty, family history, and mathematics all collide, leaving the audience with a tremendous amount of story to digest. The punchlines begin to fly fast and heavy, with many focused on Flower and her Gen-Z coded airiness.
At the exact moment when cicadas dives headlong into Fibonacci sequences and differential equations, it also ratchets up the silliness. Perhaps this is to provide a release value for those whose eyelids grow heavy at the word “math” but, here, the bridge between Trim’s doggedness, Janie’s transformation, and Flower’s absurdity does feel a bit too far to cross. Ironically, amid all the themes packing this eco-thriller, it’s the ecological story that feels a bit hurried.
All in, cicadas is a bold, fresh, and provocative experiment, albeit one that at times feels like it has dual personalities.
cicadas runs at Tarragon Theatre until May 24. More information is available here.
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WRITTEN BY
Phillip Dwight Morgan
Phillip Dwight Morgan is a Toronto-based writer, playwright, and editor with bylines in the Walrus, Maclean’s, Brick Literary Journal, and the Toronto Star, among others. He is the 2025 winner of the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers (nonfiction) and was a participant in the 24/25 Obsidian Playwrights Unit and 2025 Banff Playwrights Lab.
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