CTR+ ALT+ Defeat: The Master Plan unravels Toronto’s hilarious Harbourfront Smart-City fail

By Joëlle Arianna Staropoli 

Originally published in October 2023

The Master Plan transports you through the history of the Smart City- to- be in Harbourfront’s core, and its ultimate failure to launch.  

Michael Healey’s play the Master Plan based on the bestselling book Sideways: The City Google Couldn't Buy by Josh O'Kane is playing at Crows Theatre (345 Carlaw Avenue Toronto, Ontario M4M 2T1) from September 5th until October 19th, 2023. 

The Master Plan is an eye-opening and amusing retelling of Waterfront Toronto’s master failure at a partnership with Sidewalk Labs and its parent company Google’s Alphabet Inc.. The play recounts the partnership established in 2017 and their journey, and failure,  in creating a smart city on some of Toronto’s prime real estate, Harbourfront.  

Although a work of fiction- as emphasized throughout the show- Healey’s script takes a hilarious approach to a difficult moment in Toronto’s developmental history.  

Mike Shara’s Portrayal of  Dan Doctoroff brought a refreshingly hysterical interpretation to the stereotypical ‘Wolf of Wall Street’; and Peter Fernandes was quick to every beat change and character serving as a fabulous narrator.  

Although a very dialogue-heavy show, reflected in its two-and-a-half-hour run time,  the arena-style theatre, the cast’s thoughtful use of the stage and tasteful fourth wall breaking create a silly, easy-to-follow performance.  

The use of TV screens is always something difficult to balance with live theatre as many times it creates an easy way out for lazy set attempts and boring beat changes.  This is not the case in The Master Plan.  Screens are used to explain important details of different company ‘family trees’, offering a straightforward web of critical people in the recounting without having to directly introduce new characters on stage.  

Contrastingly, there is not much consideration for accessibility.  Often the actors’ inability to vocalize events happening on screen while delivering their lines creates some confusion for the audience and does not consider visually impaired guests.   

The costumes are simple yet effective, but it is the set and lighting that stand out in this show.  The conference table shaped like the harbourfront plot of land in question provides an effective way to see multiple characters’ faces and provides some insight into what the smart city could have looked like.  The use of lighting is also taken into account during beat changes and serves as a way to change the setting without changing the physical set.  

Theatre is an art form that has struggled to recover after the COVID-19 global Pandemic as audience sizes have gone down 16.8 per cent since the 2018/ 2019 show season. One of the most invaluable assets to theatre now is to understand how audiences relate to the material shown on stage through various engagement reports.

The Master Plan determines this data in a very experimental and possibly industry-changing way. The director’s virtual speech in the form of a Memeoji before the play began states that, throughout the show, audience engagement is assessed by biometric cameras tracking facial expressions and sensors under each seat detecting movement. This allows a more quantified calculation of audience engagement as a shift in emotion or a restless spectator can now be taken into account. 

Even with the option to opt out of this anonymous data collection, it was very obvious through the overwhelming laughter, at a Sunday matinee no less, that the play was very well received.  Government, AI, affordable housing and sustainability are explored in a way that is not accusatory but rather thought-provoking.  During a time of housing insecurity in Toronto and an immediate need for large-scale change in our environmental approach, The Master Plan is expository, timely and hilarious.  

This is Crow’s Theatre at its very best and brings a new amusing take to a topic that is an open wound in Toronto’s history.  An absolute must-see.

The Master plan 

4.5 stars