By Emily R. Zarevich, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter
It’s only 9:00 a.m., and 38-year-old Sarah just can’t catch a break. Her life is in shambles. A turkey farmer freshly split from her emotionally and physically distant husband, her wallet is empty, and her pent-up sexual frustration is making her cranky. With her luggage in hand, she’s landed on the doorstep of her beekeeping mother, Gail, who’s not exactly a shining pillar of support. Gail is too outspoken and pushy, prying into Sarah’s affairs and demanding an explanation for the present lack of grandchildren. Gail is also divorced and has her own hang-ups about sex, as she hasn’t yet recovered from the trauma of her ex-husband cheating on her with her ex-best friend. Twenty years ago.
Mother and daughter really don’t want to live under the same roof, where all that can be offered to the newer put-out divorcée is a smelly air mattress and dusty childhood memorabilia. Adding to the rising tension is the appearance of Gail’s smarmy sitcom archnemesis Earl and the bumbling university student-researcher Ben, who is not particularly talented at handling Gail’s bees but rather adept at saying all the wrong things at the wrong times. All their lives become intertwined by the one thing that is constantly on their minds and currently absent from their daily routines: sex.
Bee-hold the four main characters of Canadian playwright Mark Crawford’s romantic comedy The Birds and the Bees, which premiered at Theatre Burlington on Friday, October 17, 2025, at 8:00 p.m. Directed by Francesca Brugnano and produced by Michelle Spanik, Burlington’s rendition of The Birds and the Bees is two acts of relationship drama, environmental commentary, and shameless innuendo that hilariously unravels for the length of two hours. Sarah is fully fed up with the extent of her sex life being the artificial insemination of turkeys. Crop farmer and serial womanizer Earl proposes a no-strings-attached arrangement to a scandalized Gail. And the hapless Ben gets roped into the quartet by simply being too cute to resist and quickly becoming the target of Sarah’s repressed lust.
The show stars a cast of Ontario-based talent. Sarah is played by Heather Nutt-Christensen, who is a find brought in from the South Simcoe Theatre. Gail is played by Julie Donoahue, who is notable for also playing Fran in Dundas Little Theatre’s recent production of Things I Know to Be True. Raymond Beauchemin is Gail’s adversary and, later, love interest Earl. Beauchemin is also a playwright, and his play What We Talk About When We Talk About Trump recently premiered at the 2025 Brave New Works festival at Theatre Aquarius. Jeff Nguyen, who plays Sarah’s dorky and much-younger suitor Ben, comes from Toronto’s theatre scene and has now made his debut on a Halton stage.
Each of the four actors put their all into their performances, and can be commended for effectively delivering a script that can, on occasion, come across as awkward and crass with all of its heavy reliance on dirty talk, flirtation, and partial nudity for its strictly adult brand of humour. The Birds and the Bees is not a prudish production. There’s no subtlety here, no clean-cut Romeo and Juliet innocence where the leads’ consummation of their romance is left ambiguous. Sarah and Ben, and then Gail and Earl, have at each other after only some very weak reservations. Some audience members, as prime witnesses to these racy interactions, may feel like they’re intruding on the characters’ privacy. Others may applaud and hoot — as they did on the Saturday, October 18, 2025, performance — when the characters strip onstage or start off a scene in bed together.
Credit must be given where credit is due to set designers Cataldo Brugnano and Michelle Spanik. With the help of carpenter John Spanik, Spanik’s assistants, and a team of set painters (whose names are listed in the show’s program), they’ve recreated the inside of a farmhouse that looks like it could have been imported plank-by-plank straight from the countryside. The characters argue, drink painfully sour mead, and run around in their underwear, surrounded by realistically peeling wallpaper and windows that really look like they’ve been battered by Canada’s tumultuous weather. The props are also appropriately shabby. The flowery bedspreads look like they’ve been passed down a few generations. Even the mugs look like they came straight from a small-town second-hand shop.
The Birds and the Bees, story-wise, uses its four characters to explore sexuality and love from every angle. Do two people have to know each other well to achieve intimacy? Can they be intimate when they’ve got years of murky history between them? Is there such a thing as too little or too much experience in the bedroom? Does being human set our relationships apart from the mating rituals of nature, or are we just like bees and birds, driven by our instincts? And when relationships are platonic, such as between a mother and daughter, is it possible to heal from years of miscommunications and misunderstandings? These are all questions proposed by what conspires between the cast, and the audience is left to decide the answers. But one thing is certain: everyone needs love and companionship of some form in their lives, no matter their background or age. Gail and Earl’s situationship-turned-romance in their elderly years especially is proof that it’s never too late to find love again.
It’s also not too late to buy tickets to The Birds and the Bees and show support to Burlington local theatre this fall. Interested theatregoers can still score tickets to Theatre Burlington’s upcoming showings on October 24, 25, 31, and November 1, 2025. Tickets for both the matinee and evening shows can be bought here. For a show that’s more kid-friendly — much more kid-friendly — than The Birds and The Bees, ticket-buyers can also consider purchasing spots to see Pinocchio by Vic Hyde, which will premiere on November 29, 2025.
