Toronto Fringe Review: Zac Williams returns with another heartfelt solo play exploring memory, identity, and the people we spend our lives trying to find
By Ross
One of the joys of a Toronto Fringe marathon is discovering artists whose voices continue to evolve. By the time I reached Finding Jamie, I was looking forward to seeing what Zac Williams would create after the heartfelt honesty of his previous Fringe outing, Jack Goes to Therapy, his cleverly written, semi-autobiographical show that “delves deep inside our collective emotional soul via the funny bone and an unbandaged broken heart“. His newest solo play continues that same warmth and vulnerability, inviting us into a story that begins with a deceptively simple question: “Where does it all begin?” Armed with little more than a pen, some paper, and an engaging gift for storytelling, Williams starts unpacking a mystery that slowly becomes something much more personal than the search for a missing student.
Williams plays James, an awkward Grade 8 teacher whose somewhat carefully ordered adult life begins to blur with memories of his own childhood, while he and a few other teachers search for a student named Jamie who has disappeared during a class trip to the zoo. As the search unfolds through waddling penguins, intimidating kangaroos, and anxious colleagues, another Jamie continues to interrupt.
“Boys never choose dress-up,” young Jamie tells us, except that he always does. Then one day another boy says yes, and for a brief, wonderful moment it feels as though every secret hope has finally found somewhere to belong. Williams quietly builds the play around those tiny moments when childhood possibility collides with the expectations placed upon boys, allowing the title to carry a quiet double meaning that becomes one of the play’s sweetest discoveries.
Williams remains an engaging and immensely likeable performer, easily holding the audience’s attention through humour, vulnerability, and an easy conversational style. His writing thoughtfully layers together the two timelines, and the emotional connections between teacher and student are handled with genuine care. At times, however, the storytelling feels slightly rushed, leaving some of its most compelling emotional ideas just beneath the surface. The piece feels as though it would benefit from a stronger outside dramaturgical eye, allowing its strongest emotional moments to linger while giving its quieter beats more room to breathe. Likewise, presenting the piece in the round at VideoCabaret’s Deanne Taylor Theatre occasionally works against the intimacy Williams is working so carefully to create. A more traditional, proscenium-style staging might have focused the storytelling, strengthened our connection to his performance, and allowed him a little more space to settle comfortably into the rhythm of the piece.
Finding Jamie is filled with kindness. It cares deeply about the young child who simply wanted someone to join him in a game of dress-up or to say yes to an invitation to be his best friend, and about the adult still learning how to step forward into his own self. Those early moments continue to shape the person he has become. Like the search at the centre of the play itself, Williams suggests that finding another person often begins with allowing ourselves to rediscover the child we once were and the adult we hope to become.