THEATRE REVIEW

NOVEMBER 2025 | Volume 257

 

Realwheels Theatre, Vancouver’s D/disability-oriented company, has changed its name to Glitch Theatre, and its inaugural production is the premiere of Alex K. Masse’s first play, Faye’s Room. In the transition from Realwheels to Glitch the company has added invisible disabilities to its list of concerns, including autism and ADHD, the focuses of this play.

Faye (Hailey Conner) works at the Sweet Buns Café, where all the employees are neurodiverse and/or queer. They include Ari (Marlee Michael Pearl), Mina the boss (Sabrina Symington), and Mina’s speedy son Chase (Mason Temple). Faye loves it there, where “no one ever asks me, ‘What’s wrong with you?’”

Faye’s autism makes her fiercely self-conscious, afraid she’ll be seen as a “freak.” Even within the safety of the café she’s constantly on the edge of feeling overwhelmed, often close to despair. When the pressure gets too great for her, she steps into a supply closet which transforms in her imagination into a sanctuary room, filled with books and pictures of butterflies. It’s a special place (set and props by Stephen Field Elgar; butterfly projections by June Hsu) where even Chase, when he pursues Faye to tell her she’s okay, experiences the magic.

Ari has a sweet crush on Faye, who avoids her, even though Faye is also sweet on Ari, because Faye has such a devastating lack of self-confidence. It takes the revelation that Chase and Mina have ADHD, and a bit of a good-natured lecture from Mina about embracing the thing that makes you special, for Faye to start to figure things out.

Co-directed by Mily Mumford and Angelica Schwartz, the good-natured script is a relatively straightforward platform for airing the issues. What makes the production special are the performances. Conner’s Faye is so vulnerable, so obviously smart, and so transparently powerful in her desperation. You can almost see her brain working to undermine her confidence. You can’t help rooting for Pearl’s gentle Ari. And though Chase’s hyper-everything is annoying at first, Temple ultimately makes him super-likeable, a person just trying his best, like all the others, to be himself in a world not tuned to his frequency.

 

 

 

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