He plays a Norway maple in this riveting play at Soulpepper. It’s a bigger part than you think

Michael Healey is branching out in his return to stage acting.
This week at Soulpepper, he’s performing in his own play, the much-acclaimed, Dora Award-winning “The Master Plan,” about the failed attempt by Sidewalk Labs — originally owned by Google parent company Alphabet — to work with Waterfront Toronto and build a “smart city” along the waterfront.
Among the characters Healey plays is Tree, a real-life Norway maple that exists at 134 Yorkminster Rd. in North York, whose fate has been caught up in municipal red tape for years.
As Healey pointed out in a recent Zoom interview, Tree, who narrates the two-act show, is a metaphor for “the depth of Toronto city bureaucracy.”
Healey began discussions about playing the part with Crow’s artistic director, Chris Abraham, after actor Peter Fernandes — who originated the role last year — got cast in Michael Ross Albert’s “The Bidding War,” which recently opened at Crow’s.
“I haven’t been onstage in a decade and so had real questions about my stamina and my concentration,” said Healey, between performances at Hamilton’s Theatre Aquarius before the production hit Soulpepper, which is co-producing with Crow’s. Healey, best known for plays like “The Drawer Boy” and “Proud,” began his career decades ago as an actor in works by George F. Walker and Jason Sherman.
“We’re a week after opening in Hamilton and I’m just now getting comfortable with things, becoming able to kind of relax onstage,” said Healey. “The thing I’d forgotten about acting is the adrenalin dump that happens during the show. When you’re in your 30s, you can go to a bar and stay up with the other actors after. In your 60s, all you want to do is go home and go to bed, but then you lie there, awake. That’s one thing I’m still trying to manage.”
The role of Tree/narrator seems tailor made for the playwright/actor, who adapted the material from Josh O’Kane’s 2022 book “Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy.”
“Early on in the writing of the script, I knew there would be this character and I also knew it wouldn’t be called Josh because my perspective on the material was different from his,” said Healey. “Josh has a great journalistic neutrality in the book; even with incredible things, he states them and lets them hang. Whereas I knew when writing the play that I was going to point things out and make fun of them.”
The idea of having a tree narrate the show came to him after seeing a tweet by Toronto Star columnist Matt Elliott linking to his article about the absurdity of city council tree removal debates.
“When I figured out that a tree would be narrating the play, that was a good day in the writing process,” Healey said.
Leading up to the show’s two weeks of rehearsals, Healey spent a lot of time studying Fernandes’ performance on the Crow’s archival tape.
“Learning lines is one thing, but there’s so much choreography and moving around in the show,” said Healey. “And half the time, when you’re not talking you’re positioning a camera at somebody or cleaning up after someone has destroyed a cake. You’re constantly moving.”
A massive Fernandes fan, Healey says the actor exuded a warmth in the role, a quality that he himself doesn’t possess onstage — “I’m a lot of things, but I’m not a warm individual, that’s not my ‘hit.’”
So rather than try to emulate what Fernandes did, Healey is still finalizing what his take on the character will be.
“I want to present a kind of intellectual, or intellectually rigorous, approach to the material. I also want it to be funny and fun. The character is mildly absurd and so I want to make all of that available, in my own way.”
Healey is thrilled that both the original run of “The Master Plan” and the extension at Theatre Aquarius have been popular — both with audiences and even the real-life subjects.
“Some of the people from Sidewalk Labs came up and saw it and thought that they were treated fairly and their perspectives were accurately reflected,” he said. “Kristina Verner from Waterfront Toronto is returning and bringing some of her students to see the show.”
Healey has written half a dozen plays with political themes. But he isn’t inspired to write anything about the current political moment and the lurch toward the right.
“There’s a very real possibility of serious damage being done to Western democracy,” he said. “How do you begin to process that anxiety? If you’ve got a queer kid, how do you begin to manage the anxiety around the potential horror that might come? You can’t. You just sit and wait in fear.”
He’s currently working on a play about a public servant who goes above and beyond his station to affect change. But he said this play, and “The Master Plan,” are about things on the margins, while the centre has become horrific.
“Sometimes what I do feels irrelevant and sometimes it feels essential,” he said. “There is no bulwark against a Pierre Poilievre government except to re-engage with your community and try and make sure that the decisions that get made in your community are the things that make us cohere, that make us believe in each other and make us want to talk to each other.
“In some ways, that mirrors what theatre does. Theatre can’t solve problems, but the fact that 200 people gather and sit down and engage with something, see themselves in a play and ask questions before retreating back to their silos has its utility.”
“The Master Plan” begins Tuesday and continues until Dec. 29 at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts, 50 Tank House Lane. Visit soulpepper.ca or call 416-866-8666 for tickets and more information.
This article was edited from a previous version that misstated the run dates for the play. It runs until Dec. 29.