mai to, leela shamash & aylin sozdinler
Since before Jordan Tannahill became the youngest two-time winner of a Governor General’s Literary Award last year his name has been an electric one in the Canadian theatre community in Toronto, and after seeing the DMV/ King’s Theatrical Society Production of his play Concord Floral, which closed on January 13th, 2019, it’s not difficult to understand why.
The play was written and developed by Tannahill over a three-year period with Erin Brubacher, Cara Spooner and a group of teenagers from across the Greater Toronto Area. Many of these teenagers went on to perform in the original production in 2014 at the Theatre Centre in Toronto. It’s apt that DMV Theatre has partnered with the King’s Theatrical Society for this production, as its cast is also made up of young actors in both High School and University, and their ability to accurately capture the nuance of the way teenagers speak, move, and interact with one another is the beating heartbeat of Tannahill’s play.
The play’s title comes from the name of an abandoned greenhouse in a residential neighbourhood in Vaughan, Ontario where the local teenagers go to hang out, make out, get drunk, smoke pot, fuck around, freak out, and fuck up. Its structure alludes to Giovanni Boccaccio’s The DeCameron, a collection of novellas written around the 1350s, which the teenagers in the play are studying in school. In The DeCameron ten young people take refuge together in an Italian villa from The Plague, where each of the ten tells the other ten stories over the course of two weeks to pass the time. In Concord Floral, the ten stories the young people tell are woven together in the ways they connect with the greenhouse, and as the play goes on, they all begin to centre around one particular girl and one specific event that a class full of High School students have been trying to escape and forget for years. Concord Floral is also a ghost story, but with a twist. Along with its allusions to Boccaccio, I also found the story a bit reminiscent of Stephen King’s It. Beneath the allegory and the haunting is a clear and simple message about cruelty, complicity, guilt, and the dangers of the mob mentality.
All ten of these young actors bring their characters to vivid life and make strong choices. Stand outs include Aylin Sozdinler, who plays the flawlessly cool Rosa and gives her character a wonderful detached quality, but still manages to find moments of real nuance, David Woroner (as Just Joey) and Leela Shamash (as Forever Irene) who both deliver captivating and harrowing monologues centred around the awkwardness, vulnerability, and dangers associated with sex, and Ella Buckler, whose performance as the naive new girl, Bobbie, is at times completely devastating. Mai To, as Nearly Wild, brings great exuberance to her role and I loved the dynamic that she established with Sozdinler’s Rosa. There’s room for To to keep finding different ways for her character to express that exuberant spirit, but her energy and sense of urgency really helps to drive the play forward. Maika Villeneuve (Fox) and Daniel Halpern (John Cabot) also give lovely performances. I especially enjoyed the moments Halpern found to establish the dynamic between John and his sister Irene, as well as John’s endearing love of birds.
Pamela Halstead directs the production well, building the emerging narrative around the ideas of storytelling, the individual versus the collective, and how everyone is connected and complicit in this story. The play is its most captivating during the darkest moments, when the students are forced to relive a moment in their lives that they had each tried to erase. I think there is more potential for levity and laughter in Tannahill’s writing as well, and in the exploration of the dichotomy between the tragedy and the humour. I think there’s more room to really play with the idea of talking animals and philosophizing inanimate objects and to have a bit more fun with the lighter ways that the play breaks with reality.
Concord Floral isn’t saying anything new. The scene between the three girls at the bonfire at the greenhouse could have been in an episode of the original Degrassi Junior High. It’s depressing and frustrating that this scene is as relevant, as important, and as relatable today as it was 30 years ago. What feels so new, so contemporary and so immediate, is Tannahill’s use of language, along with the ways he subverts expectations, and breaks conventions in choosing which characters’ perspectives we hear. Halstead and her young cast bring this story to life with a lot of heart, passion and care and they serve Tannahill’s words well.
Concord Floral played at The University of King’s College Theatre (the Pit) between January 9th and 13th, 2019 and has closed.
