The Shoplifters

Edgerton Foundation New Play Award: Morris Panych, The Shoplifters (Winner)

In this riotously funny new comedy from Morris Panych, we meet Alma, a seasoned career shoplifter who prefers the five-finger discount over some lousy seniors’ day deal. But it’s not just an empty wallet that leads Alma to a life of petty crime - it’s also her strong convictions about social justice and economic inequality.

Along for the ride is Phyllis, Alma’s frazzled accomplice who lacks her mentor’s cool demeanour and snappy comebacks. It’s Alma who does the talking when the pair is apprehended at the grocery store by Dom, an overzealous rookie security guard. Guided by the strictness of his born-again Christian belief, Dom is ready to handcuff the culprits and call the police, but his affable senior partner, Otto, intervenes with a more sympathetic view of the crime: ＂It’s just a couple a steaks.＂ As Alma, Phyllis, Dom, and Otto share their wildly different takes on the situation, complex views on morality and ethics begin to emerge.

With its cast of oddball characters, Panych’s comedy offers biting observations about society’s haves and have-nots and how much they might actually have in common.

Cast of 2 women and 2 men.

Playwright, actor, and director Morris Panych has been -described as ＂a man for all seasons in Canadian theatre.＂ He has appeared in more than fifty works for the stage and in numerous television and film roles. He has directed more than thirty theater productions and written more than a dozen plays that have been translated and -produced throughout the world. He has twice won the Governor General’s Award: for The Ends of the Earth (Talonbooks, 1993) and for Girl in the Goldfish Bowl (Talonbooks, 2003). Panych has won the Jessie Richardson Theatre Award fourteen times, for both acting and directing. He has also been nominated six times for the Dora Mavor Moore Award and three times for the Floyd S. Chalmers Canadian Play Award.