CUPE strike be damned! For the folks on Ward’s Island, the show must go on. Despite the lack of public ferry service – which is crippling business on the island this summer – people angling for a quick theatre get-away can still catch the alternate City Ferry from the base of York street, and be seated in the rustic playhouse just 20 minutes later.

Vigil, by feted Canadian playwright Morris Panych, focuses his dark sense of humour on themes of loneliness, old age and death. The action finds a man (Matthew Ferguson) reluctantly caring for his elderly estranged aunt (Judy Sinclair) who is ostensibly on her death-bed.

The play is divided into short scenes in which the man impatiently and insensitively complains about the burdens of caring for the elderly, even making funeral arrangements right in front of her.

After a while, the brief, episodic nature of the odd-couple script makes the show feel like a comic strip – each iteration is a variation on just how brazen and insulting the man’s biting one-liners can get (example: “I’m getting concerned about your health – it seems to be improving”).

Looking a little like Matthew Broderick, Ferguson does a good job of slowly unpacking his character’s emotional baggage across the vignettes. Starting off as just an elder-abusing scumbag, Ferguson reveals the man’s vulnerability – he’s just as in need of companionship as his bed-ridden aunt – subtly, and without sacrificing his core cynicism.

Despite having only a few lines, Sinclair utilizes evocative facial expressions and body language to sneakily counteract the man’s increasingly harebrained ploys to speed her passing, showing that her character is anything but good-as-dead.