887 - Ex Machine / Robert Lepage

Robert Lepage's 887 returns to Toronto's Elgin Theatre (189 Yonge St.) for a limited engagement from Thursday, December 10 to Sunday, December 13, 2026, presented by Show One Productions. Performances are in English and run about two hours.

Created by Lepage's company Ex Machina and first staged in 2015, 887 has played sold-out houses around the world. Lepage wrote, designed and directed it, and performs it solo. The piece grew out of his childhood memories in Quebec City and asks deceptively simple questions: why do we remember the phone number from our youth but forget our current one? How does a childhood song stay lodged in the brain while the name of someone we love slips away?

From there it widens out to the commemorative markers we stop noticing, like the names of parks, streets and monuments, and to the way digital storage now props up our fading memories. Somewhere between a theatre performance and a lecture, Lepage shows the strain on an actor who must remember not only his lines but the personal and political history that shaped him. Expect his trademark stagecraft, with miniature sets, video and transformations that seem to happen in front of your eyes.

Lepage is one of the most celebrated theatre artists Canada has produced. He received the Governor General's Performing Arts Award for Lifetime Artistic Achievement, is a Companion of the Order of Canada and has directed for the Metropolitan Opera and Cirque du Soleil.

Practical notes: the Elgin is right across from the Eaton Centre, steps from Queen station on Line 1. Resale listings were running about $145 to $160 when we checked, so buy through the official Ticketmaster or Show One links rather than third-party sites. With only a handful of shows, this one is worth booking now.