Robert Lamar asks if life is determined by chance or destiny in a powerful, mind-bending, theatrical experience like no other.
The Gift, playing in the cozy St. Andrew’s United Church basement through March 9, is the product of a theatrical dream team: former Neptune Theatre artistic director Ron Ulrich as director and writer, Halifax creator and performer Robert Lamar and veteran producer Brookes Diamond.
This is not pull-the-rabbit-out-of-the-hat magic. Lamar combines the intimacy of an autobiographical one-man show with a serious look into the nature of human life, doing experiments with voluntary audience participation until he proves his point in an uncanny end that leaves you in wonder and awe.
The Gift starts as an enjoyable, intimate, one-man show – Lamar is a warm performer with a good sense of humour – about a boy and his eccentric, mathematician grandfather, whose biography is on the back of the program. (Robert Clarence Doucette, born in 1920 in North Kemptville, N.S., was a University of Toronto professor emeritus who used number theory to explore the divide between chance and destiny and devised experiments as games he played with young “Robbie.”)
Torn apart by family conflict from his grandfather, Lamar returns as a much older man to the house his grandfather left to him to make discoveries that have altered the course of his life since one fateful day in June of 2019.
Set designer Steven Turner, a Cape Bretoner who worked with Cirque du Soleil, has lovingly rebuilt and replicated the old furniture in Lamar’s grandfather’s attic and filled it with objects as a mysterious world of wonders, beautifully and softly lit by Canadian lighting designer Richard Bonner.
Lamar pulls ghostly white sheets from abandoned furniture discovering locked chests, signed copies of books by the world’s greatest thinkers and clues his grandfather left him as gifts.
As he re-travels through that July day he asks audience members who have put their names in a hat to come up on stage to participate in his grandfather’s experimental games, several involving cards. These games evolve into a final puzzle that is totally amazing and impossible to figure out.
People are left to ponder the very nature of life. They also crowd around to meet Lamar after the show.
The Gift has no razzle dazzle; it is intense and intelligent, personal and honest. The cozy setting offsets any potential fear in the questions Lamar poses.
While the “experiments” are intriguing, the storytelling themes are also strong: family dysfunction, family love, reconnection, new birth. There is a wonderful motif of a vintage lamp-post (on stage), inspired by Lucy’s street lamp in the Narnia books, that guides a person home, that anchors anyone who is lost.
Due to demand the show has been extended. “I see a very long future for it,” says Diamond, “ and I have every intention of pursuing that future.”
Lamar, who created the show from scratch, worked with Ulrich during his Neptune days. “One phone call and I was in,” says Diamond. The concept of destiny versus chance reminded him of his own mother.
“She absolutely insisted. She always said, ‘You can think what you want but your destiny is secured by a plan. Everything will unfold as it’s destined to.’ It’s not how I saw the world at all.”
The producer, who has worked with his wife Fiona in entertainment production for over 40 years, is enjoying this project.
“It’s a tight team of friends who shared a dream. It’s an inspiration to work with them.”
The Gift runs 90 minutes without intermission Thursday through Saturday, 7:30 p.m., to March 9 at St. Andrew’s United Church, 6036 Coburg Rd. Enter by the side door on Coburg. For tickets ($31.95) go to: THE GIFT. A Transformative Theatrical Experience Tickets, Multiple Dates | Eventbrite. For more information go to experiencethegift.ca.
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NS reviews 
I loved the show and I am so happy that it has received a great review.
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Sounds positively fascinating!! I so wish I could see it-also I recall playing basketball in that basement. Perhaps one day it will be put on duri g the summer months.
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I have never seen anything quite like THE GIFT! It left me in total awe. Made me think about my own Destiny. Don’t walk, but run to see this play before it moves on to other theaters across Canada!
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in the review of The Gift it erroneously identifies July as the month when the adult grandson claims his grandfather’s house. The date was actually June 13, 2019, emphasizing the numbers 19 13 and 6
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