Review: City Opera Vancouver’s The Book of My Shames explores childhood traumas, adolescent sexuality, and the continuing quest for identity

City Opera Vancouver has a history of innovation and exploration.

On the surface, Isaiah Bell and Sean Guist’s The Book of My Shames, subtitled “a music theatre production of one gay man’s journey of self-discovery,” seems in line with company tradition. But what audiences at the Firehall Theatre get is an often-sweet, sometimes-sentimental one-man show, a series of wistful vignettes with music, a memory piece that explores childhood and its traumas, the disasters of adolescent sexuality, and the continuing quest for identity.

Despite the contribution of Guist, director of Victoria’s Intrepid Theatre, the show is very much all about tenor Bell, a singer with a long connection to City Opera and a theatrical/musical polymath. The core story is autobiographical. The script is written by Bell. As is the music. Bell is on stage for the entire 80-plus minutes, acting and singing, backed up by a piano trio augmented with percussion.