Theatre Projects delivers a clever, compelling contemporary fable

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This article was published 16/11/2022 (1413 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s difficult to discuss Theatre Projects’ season opener, None of This Is Happening, without giving too much away, and it’s probably best to go into Winnipeg playwright Ellen Peterson’s clever, compelling contemporary fable relatively blind to what’s to come.

Suffice it to say that we are in a world of hurt, and we’re not going to be able to tap dance our way out of it.

Kay (Monique Marcker) and Leo (Simon Miron) are siblings who seem to have fallen on hard times. Their clothing is patched and dirty, and Kay’s abode is filled with random junky items she seems to think “tourists” might want to buy.

Kay is obsessively working on a diorama of a waterfall that she’s crafting out of garbage, while Leo is mooning, quite literally, over an unrequited love.

The arrival of Kay’s daughter, Maria (Jane Testar), seems to open old wounds. Maria is a high-wire walker who has left her job at the circus under a dark cloud (among other things, she freed all the animals before leaving). Performing is in her blood, it would seem, as the three were part of a family vaudeville acts years ago.

She wants to crash in her old room, but finds it filled with trash, like the rest of Kay’s home.

And that’s when things start to get weird.

None of This Is Happening wouldn’t work without cast chemistry, and Marcker, Miron and Testar deliver it in spades.

Prickly Kay is neither warm nor nurturing — she’s no one’s idea of an earth mother — but Marcker’s expressive hands and purposeful actions make her somehow appealing.

Uncle Leo, meanwhile, is a sensitive, nervous fellow prone to eruptions; Miron gives the character a clownish aspect, a clumsy grace (or is that a graceful clumsiness?) that’s both charming and a little sad.

Maria has big only-child energy, and Testar’s petulance and entitlement stem from always being lavished with attention.

Playwright Peterson is doing a bit of a high-wire act herself here, balancing an extended metaphor with a domestic story about family, and it doesn’t always work.

Too much of the play’s 85-minute (no intermission) running time is spent in bickering mode. Even though Peterson gives the dialogue a witty, bantering edge — it would be fair to call this a comedy — and the three actors ably ping-pong insults and accusations among them, the argumentative tone does get grating.

It’s made more noticeable in contrast when the trio revisit their old act, delivering an utterly winning soft-shoe song-and-dance act (choreography is by Carol-Ann Bohrn) that lightens the mood momentarily.

Then again, we’re probably not supposed to feel complacent or comfortable. The artfully garbage-strewn set by Joyce Licup contributes to the sense of unease; the antsiness is heightened by Emma Hendrix’s sound design, which makes us feel like seams are being stretched and ends are fraying.

“Beauty is easy,” Kay tells us. What None of This Is Happening delivers isn’t beautiful, but it’s real. And it’s really happening.

jill.wilson@winnipegfreepress.com

Twitter: @dedaumier