THEATRE REVIEW

April 2026 | Volume 262

 

Sometime during the 90-minute span of End of Greatness, Veda Hille and Maiko Yamamoto tell us that they have been working on this show for three years. Good friends and frequent artistic collaborators, the two have made Theatre Replacement’s annual East Van Panto at the Cultch a must-see: Maiko as producer, Veda as musical director/keyboardist/singer.

Maiko is a very relaxed, confident performer with a lovely singing voice. And Veda is one of the most uniquely imaginative and quirky songwriters/musical performers around. This is a show I’ve very much looked forward to seeing.

I can’t say that I was disappointed exactly. I expected the unexpected from this duo. And I enjoyed End of Greatness very much for the most part. The performances are utterly charming. But I didn’t really get it – which is maybe on me as much as them. I found the structure, such as it is, too arbitrary for my taste, and the central theme(s) or idea(s) hazy. What is the end of greatness, they keep asking during the show. At the end I still had no idea.

With a screen for abstract video and text on a stage filled with props (Landscape and Visual Design Geoffrey Farmer) and costume pieces (Hitoko Okada Textile Design), joined by guitarist Thom Gill and vibraphonist Julia Chien, Veda and Maiko address each other and the audience. Veda spends much time centre stage playing a Roland synthesizer, which a little too often drowns out some of the fascinating lyrics she sings.

The two talk about their friendship, exchange weird gifts, and sing in lovely harmony. An early theme seems to have something to do with subjective value, and key ideas emerge with their discussion of moss, mushrooms and lichens, how they are specific to earth, unique, and also part of the general pattern of the universe, microcosm mirroring macrocosm. They celebrate the Voyager spaceships, enact a lengthy folktale in which a character travels to the moon, and speculate about the beauty of things, the feelings they give us. Their final song echoes these themes: “my gravity, your galaxy; my galaxy, your gravity.” And all this is interrupted by, among other things, the making of icing for a pound cake they serve to an audience member.

I enjoyed the challenge of following their logic, trying to put together the pieces of the puzzle. I came out with a little more respect for the most modest inhabitants of our planet—consider the lowly moss—and perhaps a little more perspective on creation generally.But most of all I enjoyed the two women’s chemistry, the way they echo, interrupt or contradict each other, the way little exclamations (“uh huh’) punctuate their narratives, turning even prose into song. This is one theatrical event in which neither the form nor content is as important as its sheer liveness, the privilege of sharing the room with two profoundly offbeat talents riffing on/with the universe and each other.

 

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