Tunnels. Blackouts. Fantasies. Untold desires.
Set on the confines of a train compartment, a businessman arranges for his wife and mistress to join him under false pretenses. As the play unfolds we discover his agenda, and what lies at the end of the journey.
“All right, Derailed isn’t Tommy. It doesn’t have an orchestra or a dancing, exploding pinball machine. But Derailed does have an intelligent, darkly funny script…You’d have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to enjoy this one-hour theatrical treat…The production’s physical, clown-flavoured performance style…well suits Emil Sher’s stylized, playful and often sharply pointed text.”
– H.J. Kirchhoff, The Globe and Mail
Derailed was first workshopped at the Fringe of Toronto Festival in May 1994. Stiletto Theatre Company – Catherine Hayos and Rena Polley – presented a professional production of Derailed when it premiered at the Factory Studio Theatre in March 1995. It was nominated for four Dora Awards, including Outstanding Production and a Best Direction nomination for Jim Warren. The play was selected for the inaugural CBC Performance Arts Showcase in 1998. An excerpt from Derailed was published in Two for the Show (Playwrights Canada Press, 1999). In 2002 the play was published in Seven Short Plays from Theatre Ontario, an anthology honouring Theatre Ontario’s 30th anniversary.
Read Skip Shand’s Introduction to Derailed
“An express train to fine theatrical entertainment, Derailed detours only to add humanity to its comic figures. Set in the 50s, Emil Sher’s script uses a shorthand of language and emotion to look at a confining social period and a confining series of relationships.”
– Jon Kaplan, NOW