Lunchbox comedy revisits the rituals of the visit to the video store

John Tasker, Greg Wilson and Heidi Dayamo in Please Return to Empire Video at the Lunchbox Theatre

To celebrate its 50th anniversary, Lunchbox Theatre is producing a season of plays set in different eras - and who knew that a play set in the early 21st century could also double as a memory play?

And yet, that is the case with Please Return to Empire Video, James Odin Wade’s warm, witty love letter to the lazy, hazy days when one of your favourite errands was dropping by the local video store to rent something to watch - and snacks.

At this Empire Video, which is located in a Canadian small town that could be any small Canadian town – or could be Hanna (there’s a Nickelback reference), a trio of staff members, Cass (Heidi Damayo), Thom (Greg Wilson) and Owen (John Tasker) have a full night of work ahead, one Thursday in 2003.

For one thing, there’s a stack of VHS tapes from other Empire Video outlets that have been shipped to their store (because no one wants to stock VHS tapes anymore due to the emergence of the DVD) that have to be catalogued by quitting time – at which point Cass and Owen have plans to see The Matrix Reloaded, the sequel to the film that may have changed their lives.

The trio is all young movie buffs working for minimum wage and anxious to share their opinions about movies. Thom, who is hungover, is one of those hardcore types who feels its his moral imperative to talk a customer out of watching Signs by M. Night Shamalayan (“That’s kid stuff!”) in favour of the original Alien.

Cass loves movies and dreams about saving up enough cash to move to Toronto and attend film school, while Owen seems to be more of a go-along, get-along type who’s content to sell customers whatever they want to rent and play golf on the weekend at his dad’s country club.

It’s all kind of small stakes stuff, but in the lives of three 20somethings with big dreams, it feels like so much more than that – and the trick in Please Return to Empire Video is finding the right blend of sweet nostalgia for an era most of us probably never even thought of as an era and to also find a way to translate a workplace comedy into something a little more emotionally consequential.

Damayo’s Cass is a bit of a keener, but she’s also in love with the movies – and she’s easy to care about. Damayo just did an excellent job playing Stella in Theatre Calgary’s A Streetcar Named Desire, a story set in 1940s America, so she’s doing all sorts of theatrical time travel these days, and she’s compelling and sympathetic in every single era she happens to land in.

Wilson’s Thom is kind of like one of those 1970s indie paper film critics. He smokes and drinks and walks around with nunchunks to work off his hangover, and he has many of Please Return to Empire Video’s funniest moments.

Tasker’s Owen is a little bit blander than the other two. He’s a conciliator and he seems to lack the burn that drives Cass and the agita that anchors Thom – but Tasker gives him a grace and thoughtfulness and he’s a character who doesn’t have to be right all the time, which makes him unique at this workplace.

Director Bronwyn Steinberg does a nice job animating the story and steering her cast towards some emotional payoffs, and the set, by Hanna Loosen, will leave you longing for a Blockbuster to linger in!

Please Return to Empire Video makes a fine theatrical companion piece to a Canadian film that’s sort of a love letter to the same era and world – Chandler Levack’s I Like Movies, which came out in 2022.

They both celebrate a moment in time when the local video store could be a kind of emotional refuge for movie lovers and a community hub, too, where you loaded up on soda, popcorn and Hollywood dreams.

At Lunchbox through April 13. For tickets and information, go here.