“The more significant and original accomplishment in this production is Jacob Leonard’s performance as Proteus. Against all odds, Leonard makes this dickhead charming. Partly, that’s because Leonard delivers the text so well, making clear and impressively casual sense of it. And partly it’s because he presents the character’s baseness with a bemused detachment that reels us into his point of view." - Colin Thomas

“Finally, here’s a play that’s mysterious, riveting, enigmatic, literary and layered.” - Jo Ledingham

Making that kind of naturalism work involves a kind of theatrical magic that we rarely see these days.” - Jerry Wasserman. ‍

“This production from all day breakfast theatre in association with The Search Party is exquisite.” - Colin Thomas

“Forgiveness is an actorly feat of endurance and artistry” - Create a Stir

“Most of the actors in the supporting cast play multiple characters and those switches are entirely credible proving this is ensemble acting at its finest.” - Calgary Herald

When I first saw Jacob Leonard onstage this year, I thought, “There’s one. He’s got it. Watch him.” I’d forgotten that I’d seen Leonard in 2019 — on video, during the early days of Covid — in a Studio 58 production called The Doll’s House Project, in which director Laara Sadiq had cast all her student actors in multiple roles in Ibsen’s classic. Back then, I wrote, “I was particularly taken with Leonard’s Nora, Torvald, and Krogstad.” Krogstad is the blackmailing “villain” of the piece. “Leonard adds self-deprecating humour to Krogstad’s tale of woe,” I said, “lending the character self-awareness, instant three-dimensionality, and an unusual level of likability.”Complexity is Leonard’s strong suit. This year, he appeared in the two-hander The Sound Inside, playing the unstable young writing student Christopher Dunn opposite Kerry Sandomirsky’s creative writing prof, Bella Baird. Leonard caught every nuance of Christopher’s loneliness, threat, humour, intelligence, and confusion. What subtlety. It was a remarkable piece of work.