review of the revue

in case you weren't already convinced of the merits of our show based on content and cast alone...(cue: me coyly winking)

NOW Magazine
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Reviewed by: Jordan Bimm

Stacy Douglas’s insightful solo comedy explores hidden imperialist and racist tendencies in Canadian history. Presented as a series of sketch comedy scenes, Douglas gets the most laughs playing Sam, a wide-eyed boy scout on a wilderness expedition who comes across as a younger, more astute Napoleon Dynamite.

Fast Forward Revue
3.5/5

Reviewed by: E. Sempe

This one-woman show illustrates the intriguing parallels between Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book and the Boy Scouts of Canada by highlighting the imperialist rhetoric that links the two. The tone of the performance is light, to counterbalance the heavy subject matter. The gravity of the play’s message is demonstrated to full effect during the scene transitions, which consist of images projected onto a screen demonstrating shockingly racist and imperialist quotes and posters from Canadian history and government.

The set is minimalistic, and actress Stacey Douglas delivers an impressive performance as she bounces from character to character: geeky boy scout, high-school drama teacher, and teenage students giving in-class Canadian history presentations. Transitions are fluid, and accompanied by live music. Only the recurring image of the Nemean Lion, presented as a dancing lion shadow-figure behind a screen, is somewhat unclear and lacks cohesiveness as a visual element in the initial stages of the play. By the end, however, the symbol of the lion loses its ambiguity, and is even rendered poignant, as it becomes the sign for all those heroes wrongly accused as villains.

Director James Burrows notes that “imperialist roots in Canada run deep and are rarely discussed critically.” How to Build an Empire certainly does address and criticize these tendencies, but manages to do so without coming across as contrived or too plaintive. It is both comical and light, but still delivers a serious message: what more could you ask for?