Here's a show that's out of the box.
From a shipping container, performer Ben Caplan erupts – all flowing locks and chutzpah.
In plum velvet top hat and travel-stained coat, he looks part-ZZ Top, part-P.T. Barnum. He seizes attention and never lets go in a work that fuses comedy, tragedy, klezmer music and politics in a folk tale about a search for home.
The container opens like a picture book to reveal the scant belongings of people forced to flee – a battered suitcase, a samovar – and a four-piece band.
Caplan, The Wanderer, is emcee, narrator and commentator, constantly in motion around the stage as he accompanies his songs and patter with guitar and banjo. His scratchy baritone resembles Tom Waits.
Between his numbers, within the container unfolds the story of Chaya (Mary Fay Coady) and Chaim (Dani Oore), two young Romanian Jews who meet in 1908 after fleeing their homeland for Canada.
Chaya is deadpan and buttoned-up, Chaim boyish and endearing. They've both known pain and horror.
The pair (who are also part of the band) tentatively attempt to make a life in a new land that has opened its door to them.
But there are cracks, as Chaim is haunted by the Pogrom in which his family was butchered and Chaya by the husband and infant who did not survive the perilous journey.
And each are unsettled by "Old Stock" Canadians who resent being swamped by these ragged arrivals. Sound familiar?
While set in the past, and steeped in Jewish tradition, its contemporary resonance is clear.
"We all, sometimes, pound on the door, hoping to be let in, even if it's the door to the human heart," Caplan says.
The piece is filled with memorable songs. Most moving is a lullaby between Caplan and Chaya, redolent of Leonard Cohen.
The 90-minute Canadian show, directed with imagination and energy by Chris Barry, is also at times extremely bawdy. As Caplan recites an extensive list of euphemisms for sex, all that's missing are Roy and HG's "horizontal folk-dancing" and "playing the bed flute".
Playwright Hannah Moscovitch has reached into her family's history for this tale of upheaval. She is Chaya and Chaim's great-granddaughter.
Exuberant, spiky and moving, this razor-sharp piece cuts to the quick.
Until January 20