Emotional baggage

Matt Baram has nothing against Naomi Snieckus’s dead grandma, but when he suggests tossing her crochet hook in the giveaway pile, Snieckus is nearly ready to file for divorce from her partner in comedy and in life.

“You might as well put my grandmother in the dumpster,” replies Snieckus.

Yes, Baram’s shrugging shoulders suggest — we might as well.

This early interaction in Big Stuff helps shape the narrative of a couple as they attempt to sort their possessions, and subsequently themselves, into and out of cardboard boxes, compartmentalizing their emotional selves according to their learned storage habits.

You’re either a Matt — a willing winnower who understands that nothing is forever — or a Naomi — a stubborn keeper who’s “one Tupperware lid away from being a hoarder.”

In Big Stuff, a well-packed roadshow of sentimental antiques, the object — a stuffed monkey, a needlepoint portrait of a sad orphan, a pricey telescope substituting as an under-the-desk footrest — is a gateway to both unhad experience and transportative nostalgia. In that hook, Naomi can see the wall-hangings of the past and the pillow shams of the future: just don’t mention that she doesn’t know how to crochet.

“It’s nice to have the thing for the thing,” Naomi says later on.

Off-stage, Baram and Snieckus met through their work at Toronto’s Second City, where they were impressed by one another’s improvisational finesse, even if their spur-of-the-moment narratives routinely wound up at the same romantic endpoint.

“If we played truckers, we fell in love,” they joke. If they played teammates, they fell in love. If they played brother and sister… they still fell in love.

The inevitability of that connection led the couple to get married in a small civil ceremony in Toronto, merging both destinies and acquired treasures: stacks of vinyl records, obscure art, ratty sweaters and natty sundresses.

Raised in the 1970 s by parents who presumably grew up with access to less, the couple, now in their 50s, is forced throughout this improv-infused 105-minute comedy, to accept the gift and the burden of more.

As their parents age, and eventually, die, Matt and Naomi’s basement — where this touring production presumably takes place — becomes a monument to accumulation.

The junkyard is where aged appliances go to die — Matt and Naomi’s basement is where burnt-out toasters go to enjoy climate-controlled retirement.

Though it could easily devolve into a staged production of show-and-tell, with the performers using each item on stage as a capsule for storytelling, Baram and Snieckus are too clever to sink too deeply into such a repetitive and unrewarding structure.

The performers, directed by renowned Canadian playwright Kat Sandler, rely on their improv chops — and the audience’s — to ensure that the storytelling is both unpredictable and shared. At the show’s outset, the couple distribute cards and golf pencils so audience members can write down “an item you have at home that reminds you of someone close to you.”

The cards are then collected, and throughout the production serve as welcome commercial breaks the improv veterans then incorporate into their own story. This keeps the show both regenerative and engaging.

As Baram and Snieckus’s script jogs audience memory, they pull from that trove, also calling on attendees to share about their own collections and recollections; these interactions bubble with randomness and strangeness, often to hilarious effect.

One man in the audience collected cacti, about 75 according to him and nearly 200 according to his wife.

Why cacti, Matt and Naomi ask?

“Because they thrive on neglect,” the man says without hesitation.

Throughout the show, Baram and Snieckus periodically ask the audience whether to keep an item — say, a collage made by Baram’s dad Harvey featuring astronaut John Glenn, Bill Cosby and several relatives pasted over the faces of NHL legends, or his mom Laishu’s needlepoint portrait of a sad orphan child — or to toss it in the dump box.

“If you get rid of this, how do you remember your mom?” a bewildered Snieckus asks after Baram nominates the orphan for the trash.

The answer to that question, which breaks past Baram’s veneer of stoic grief, masked by a tendency to deflect with humour, is ultimately what allows Big Stuff to sing an original melody rather than simply hum a familiar tune.

The memory remains alive when we smell their perfume, when we sing their favourite songs, when we picture them waiting for us at the airport gate and most of all, when the performers say the names of their loved ones out loud: Harvey, Victor, Emma, Laishu and Anne.

It’s nice to have the thing for the thing, as long as we remember the name. winnipegfreepress.com/benwaldman