Never Swim Alone

by Daniel MacIvor

directed by David Whiteley
feturing Micah Jondel DeShazer, Sunny Ryan and david Whiteley

October 16-26 at the Gladstone

Preview October 16; Opening Night October 17
Tuesday-Saturday 7:30pm
Saturday & Sunday 2:30pm

See Never Swim Alone in a double bill with See Bob Run as “CAUTIONARY TALES”
Tickets at www.thegladstone.ca but you can buy now as part of a package.

playful ­• ruthless • Canadian

Run time: 100 minutes including intermission

“Two men enter a room, a taller man and a shorter man, and each man carries a briefcase. The first man seems very much like the second man and the second man seems very much like the first man, but they are not. No. They are not for two reasons. One: one man is the first man, and two: one man in his briefcase has a gun.”

One of MacIvor’s first hits, Never Swim Alone appears at first glance to be a light-hearted contest between two high-finance alpha males, refereed by­­… a woman in a bathing suit? Through flashbacks we see the childish roots of their obsession with winning when the woman, as a girl, challenged the two boys to a swimming race. With wickedly dark humour, MacIvor’s cautionary tale reveals how toxic masculinity poisons women and men alike, with harms ranging from merely devasta­ting to outright deadly.

Never Swim Alone is a one-act play, presented as half of a Daniel MacIvor double bill, CAUTIONARY TALES, paired with another MacIvor masterpiece See Bob Run presented by partner company Sunny Ryan Productions.

Age Appropriateness: 14+: course language, violence, mature themes (sexual abuse, misogyny)

This is a Canadian Actors’ Equity Association production under the Artists’ Collective Policy.

Never Swim Alone was first produced in 1991 by da da kamera at Platform 9 Theatre in The Theatre Centre in Toronto.