Is The Last Timbit Canada's musical — or just another ad for a donut shop?

Tim Hortons put in an unusual order to celebrate its 60th birthday: they asked for a musical, hiring some big names in the Canadian theatre world to create and star in the production.

The show, titled The Last Timbit, follows a group of people stuck at a Tim Hortons in Ontario during a snowstorm, and the franchise owner and his employee who try to keep everyone in good spirits. 

It ran for 5 nights at Toronto's Elgin Theatre at the end of June, and was produced in association with Michael Rubinoff, an originating producer of the hit Canadian musical Come From Away.

Today on Commotion, host Elamin Abdelmahmoud chats with CBC Entertainment reporter Jackson Weaver about The Last Timbit and whether a show about Tim Hortons, created by Tim Hortons, is worth biting into.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: Let's talk about The Last Timbit. Mainly, why does this musical exist?

Jackson: That is a fantastic question. The reason this musical exists — and we can't beat around the bush — this is an objective ad. Tim Hortons's 60th anniversary of the restaurant existing, wanted to celebrate that somehow. But also, we have to keep in mind that the reason they're big is they're "Canada's restaurant" — that's what people think of. People come here from outside of Canada and be like, "Oh, I have to go to Tim Hortons." But it's not technically a Canadian restaurant anymore…. So whether it's Canadian or not is kind of up in the air. That said, Tim Hortons's brand is being Canadian. This is an opportunity to say Canadiana words adjacent to Tim Hortons until it brainwashes you into loving it. 

Elamin: I have a pretty high tolerance for that, but also an upper limit of how much that can register, and I don't know how you put that into a story. Do you want to describe how this plays out in The Last Timbit? 

Jackson: The story here is kind of inspired by a true story. There was a snowstorm in December 2010, mostly in the Sarnia, Ontario area. If you read some news articles, there's one line where this guy's like, "My fingers and toes are really cold. I'm trapped in this Tim Hortons," and that's what the musical comes out of. It's about these people in the storm outside of Sarnia who waylaid in a Tim Hortons and then start betting with Timbits.

Elamin: Okay, I'm stressed out by just you describing that as the premise for the show, but fine. I have to say, this does feel a little bit like a throwback to the industrial musicals in the 1950s. I feel like GE used to do this, you know? It wasn't even for general audiences as much as it was for employee morale, in a sense. Is that what this is?

Jackson: There definitely is the history of the industrial musical where, almost insanely, you get big companies trying to make people feel together; you show it to employees. They did one show like that here for Tim Hortons. The very first show was for franchise owners, I think, and employees, et cetera. After that though they opened it to the public, which is not what industrial musicals are. So it's actually closer to the revue musical or the concept musical. A revue musical is where you have a bunch of songs that aren't necessarily telling a story — Cats, kind of. A concept musical is just, "Here's a weird idea. Let's throw some songs at it," like Cats maybe. So mixing those all together, it does make an ad that is kind of in the musical.

Elamin: Jackson, I do want you to be aware of the fact that you just compared The Last Timbit to Cats. I understand what you're trying to get at here, but even covering this leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth — kind of like a honey dip Timbit, ayo. That's not my kind of Timbit. Does it feel like just one big commercial?

Jackson: I don't want to be too unfair here, because—-

Elamin: You can be. You're totally welcome to. 

Jackson: There are some good songs. There are a lot of really good, talented people in there. There are some laughs. This does exist as a commercial, but what has really cunningly been done by Tim Hortons and the ad agency that dreamed this up is they've hitched their wagons to the success of struggling theatrical artists.

Theater has not done well after COVID. It's maybe an industry hit the hardest because the performers are in person and the audience is in person. This gives a way for artists to go back to the stage. If more industries do this, then maybe things will be great and sunny for musical artists that are struggling. So there is that. And outside of that, the songs are, as I said, somewhat good, but the plot is so paper thin and there's like maybe 90 per cent too much just throwing "always fresh, always Tim Hortons" lines in there for it to really exist as a standard musical.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Jackson Weaver produced by Jean Kim.