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From left, Anna Cummer, Jeff Lillico, Stephen Hair and Nora McLellan in The Shoplifters.Trudie Lee

There's an often-repeated Great Depression-era tale about the legendary New York Mayor Fiorello La Guardia. According to lore, the mayor was officiating in court when a woman charged with stealing a loaf of bread for her starving family was brought before him. He fined her $10 – what she had done was wrong. But he then turned around and said he was fining everyone in the courtroom 50 cents for living in a city where a person has to steal bread in order to eat. The woman, the story goes, left the courtroom with $47.50.

The moral grey zones that can be associated with shoplifting are a key element in Morris Panych's new comedy The Shoplifters, having its Canadian premiere at Theatre Calgary, directed by Haysam Kadri. The play, which had its world premiere in Washington in 2014, centres on Alma (Nora McLellan), a career shoplifter who gets caught trying to lift some pricey steaks by Dom (Jeff Lillico), an overzealous supermarket security guard having a busy first day on the job. As the interrogation takes place in the store's stockroom (the set of towering boxes is something to behold), it becomes clear that Dom's boss, the veteran security guard Otto (Stephen Hair) sees things differently. "Grey is everything that isn't black or white; it's a large area," he says at one point in the play.

"Theft is wrong, no question; how wrong is the question," Mr. Panych observes in Theatre Calgary's play guide for The Shoplifters. "We all know in our hearts that a starving person stealing food to eat is not the same, for instance, as a rich executive soaking investors or embezzling funds. There is a lot of in-between when it comes to wrongdoing."

The Shoplifters is at Theatre Calgary until Sept. 27.

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