Katya, the child of Russian immigrants to Canada, eyes each audience member as they enter the theatre, and with innocent determination befriends us through an offering of jelly beans. She wears a suit vest and mismatched pants, and her physicality is almost Chaplinesque. Katya’s parents are Boris and Tatiana, literature professors and members of the “creative labour class,” forced out of Soviet Russia because they are Jewish. Katya is the audience’s guide to her family and her parents’ link to the tiny village they came from and the unspoken trauma of their journey. There is a moment when actress Elison Zasko, as Tatiana, mimes, through a series of deliberate movements, making a jar of pickles and then, without a word, transforms into Boris eating a pickle and watching her. That the audience follows this sequence perfectly is testament to Zasko’s remarkable skill as a solo performer. Watch for these precise nuances. Watch her.

Four out of five stars.