Five long, nearly identical white dresses on wire clothes hangers hang suspended from the ceiling with red velvet ribbon. Green and pink light illuminates each one, and a thin haze fills the room. It’s like a surreal deconstruction of laundry on a clothesline, with a sinister edge.
I held my breath and promised myself I wouldn’t blink during the entire length of the show, even though, ironically, the show explores what happens when you close your eyes.
An original sapphic horror musical written by Jessa Richer with additional compositions by Jason Kokkovas, direction by Jacqui Sirois, and choreography by Alli Carry, When You Close Your Eyes follows four young women in a small town who feel trapped by their circumstances until a newcomer arrives with promises of an escape. Exploring how human desire and desperation can be manipulated to push people to extremes, When You Close Your Eyes is a slow, smooth descent into madness.
Delaney (Kendra Cordick) lives with her mother and works at a video store managed by the sardonic Will (Jack Mosney). Desperately wishing to leave town, she meets a stranger, Vera (Josie Smith), who claims to know a way to escape. Delaney, Vera, and three other women engage in various bizarre rituals, trying to find the bliss Vera claims they can reach when they close their eyes.
Staged in the round at VideoCabaret’s Deanne Taylor Theatre, this indie production provides its audience with an incredibly intimate viewing experience. With most seats extremely close to the stage, you won’t miss a bloody detail across the two-hour runtime (including one intermission).
The show opens with the soft sounds of birds chirping, interrupted by a fast, pounding drumbeat. Five women wearing flowing white clothes and sheer white blindfolds enter, darting under the floating dresses as they hum and vocalize. At first singing in unison, they break off into separate, overlapping melodies, the pre-recorded instrumental track complementing their melodic chants; electric guitar riffs and yet more drumbeats make for an intense yet beautiful auditory experience.
We hear a variety of musical genres as the show progresses. ‘80s rock instrumentals combined with Georgian-choir-inspired vocals is a strange combination, but this is part of the production’s charm. During a dreamlike segment in the second act, Azaria Shams sings a quirky pop number while Emma Woodside prances around in a cat costume, delivering an unexpected and brilliant operatic performance.
Carry’s choreography offers hypnotizing ritualistic movements. The actors are in near-constant motion, giving all areas of the audience a view of the action. We watch the women engage in elaborate synchronised arm, hand, and finger movements, which we later realize is a ritual. At first, we see the gestures used in choreography, but when they return during one of Vera’s moonlit meetings, blood is shed. The actors deliver a chillingly cheery nursery-rhyme-esque song about pain while methodically circling a wooden chest, hands extended towards the circle’s centre, like children gleefully playing a playground game.
My favourite of the show’s haunting elements is the choice to portray Delaney’s mother as an old, yellowed dress, suspended from the ceiling. Three actors (Lilly Logue, Shams, and Woodside) puppeteer the dress and deliver the mother’s lines in unison. We see her hanging over Delaney’s life, literally, often shouting at her to pick up the phone when she calls, or demanding that she come home.
The cult-like language in Richer’s script constructs a world of its own, but remained easy to follow for me. Smith’s velvety delivery of Vera’s lines invites us to fall into this new world of cults, and to fall for her in the process. During Vera and Delaney’s first encounter, Smith calmly circles Delaney like a predator, her flowy satin skirt trailing behind her.
We see Cordick’s transformation throughout the show both in her costume, which changes from a shirt and jean shorts to a billowing, white puff-sleeve dress, as well as her demeanor. She skilfully shifts into an entirely different version of Delaney with heightened emotions, becoming creepier and crazed.
I would be curious to see what a larger-scale production of this show might look like. While a larger venue might remove some of the magic that comes with being so close to the action, a higher budget could allow for elevated versions of the show’s practical effects.
Pepper’s Ghost Productions’ mandate states that they are “searching for the unseen, onstage and on screen,” and its debut musical production fits the bill nicely. This uniquely horrifying journey into the depths of desire asks just how far someone might go to escape the misery of everyday life, and what (or who) they might sacrifice in the process.
When You Close Your Eyes runs at VideoCabaret until November 15. More information is available here.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
WRITTEN BY
Athena McIsaac
Athena McIsaac is a Toronto-based writer with a BA in Theatre and English from the University of Toronto. She previously wrote and edited for the UC Gargoyle, served as a story advisor for Studio Heartbreak’s animated short film The Lovers (2026), and was shortlisted for the 2026 JHM Humor writing award.
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