Shows and Tell

Layne Coleman’s slim memoir consists of a series of narratives that function like short stories. The actor and former artistic director of Toronto’s Theatre Passe Muraille chronicles his life as a performer, husband, and father. From the opening pages, it is apparent that Coleman is a compelling storyteller, capable of spinning even the smell of honey-covered cheese crackers into a yarn about his childhood in rural Saskatchewan. “I had always wanted to write about the boy who lived on that land,” he admits.

Coleman’s seemingly impeccable memory and sharp attention to detail are striking, especially when it comes to events that happened several decades ago. In the second chapter, “The Audition,” he describes meeting a young woman on the street in Winnipeg while hitchhiking across Canada in 1971. The green-eyed university student invited the twenty-one-year-old traveller to join her for meat loaf in the Hudson’s Bay cafeteria. “She had only eaten half of her meal�...