Just when we Millennials thought we had come up with a surefire solution to save the world from itself: sacrifice the Baby Boomers, along comes Lucy Kirkwood to throw a wrench into our plans. That’s part of the gist of her play The Children, which is produced by Keep Good (Theatre) Company and plays at the Bus Stop Theatre until May 19th, 2019.
The play is set in a world that is sort of fictionally adjacent to ours. In it there has been a Nuclear Meltdown, not unlike what happened at Fukushima in 2011, and in this scenario sections of the United Kingdom have become uninhabitable. Hazel and Robin used to live just beyond the “Exclusion Zone” but have moved to a small cottage even further away from the nuclear plant. They try to live as “normally” as possible, but they have limited electricity and access to resources like food and water as well, so they need to conserve and Robin, especially, is growing weary of it. Out of the blue they are visited by an old colleague, Rose, who used to work with them at the Nuclear Plant, but who Hazel hasn’t seen for more than thirty years. It’s unclear for a long time to Hazel and Robin why Rose has come, her presence opens up old secrets, unleashes much anxiety, confusion, and anger, and ultimately she offers Hazel and Robin an opportunity that could profoundly change the course of their lives.
What makes this play so fascinating is that it is simultaneously a kitchen sink drama centred on the relationship between three people during an odd dinner party in which a secret is revealed that changes the arc of their lives, and a story about heroism in the face of societal collapse following a large-scale human-made environmental disaster. Kirkwood’s writing doesn’t give any aspect of the plot away too soon, or in any way that feels forced or contrived, conversations meander, and things that don’t seem to be important are said that later we realize held a significance we missed. The play is funny, and it has truly unexpected twists and turns so that just when you think you understand a character’s motivation, Kirkwood throws you a curve ball and you realize that the truth is even more complex than you had thought.
This play requires extraordinary actors because it is so tightly nuanced, so luckily this production has assembled the powerhouse cast of Martha Irving as Hazel, Lee J. Campbell as Robin, and Mauralea Austin as Rose. Irving creates a beautiful portrait of Hazel, a woman who will bustle around and chatter amicably while trying to smooth over the awkwardness of having accidentally smashed an old work associate that she doesn’t really like in the nose in her kitchen. Hazel tries to find the silver lining, she believes that if she does everything in her power to keep herself healthy she will have decades ahead with her children and her grandchildren, despite the radiation, insecurity, and inconvenience of the world she’s found herself in. Campbell’s Robin is even more of a chameleon. With Hazel he is teasing, but tender, he tries to protect her from some of the grim realities that she cannot or does not want to see. With Rose he is more fun-loving and devilish, less empathetic to Hazel, and he even allows himself to shed facades altogether admitting his own exhaustion, boredom, and anxiety. Mauralea Austin’s Rose is especially captivating. While Rose and Robin are generous with their emotions and open themselves up to her, likely despite their own better judgement, Rose is cagey and distant. She is cold, calculated and logical, but at times can say one line, or reveal just a bit of herself and be absolutely devastating. Hazel is likeable. Do we like Robin? Do we like Rose? In the end, does it matter even a tiny bit? Do we like Rose more at the end of the play? Do we have more respect for her, or do we feel conflicted about the quest she is embarking upon? She makes a stunning and quite horrifying admission to Robin about her true feelings about Hazel, does this admission change the way we see her heroism, bravery and self-sacrifice?
Laura Vingoe-Cram directs the piece in a evocative kitchen set by Stephen Osler, which does look exactly like you’d imagine an affluent family’s cottage would look like if suddenly their formerly affluent friends were living there after an environmental crisis. Vingoe-Cram gives us incredible realism for this piece so that every moment is rooted in ordinary life in an extraordinary circumstance. We can’t get away from the fact that this could be us, or that this could be our future, or that for some people something very similar already happened. The constant undertone nags at you, “How would you react in this situation? If you were Hazel? If she was your mom? If she was your grandmother? What would you do?”
Kirkwood doesn’t set this play in any specific year, if it’s meant to be the present the characters are Baby Boomers, if it is set in 2050 the characters are Millennials, and it’s irrelevant, really. But, as one Millennial who is guilty of sometimes raging against “The Boomers” as though they are one indiscernible demonic blob of privilege, gluttony, ignorance and wealth responsible for all the shit overflowing in the World, it’s important to be constantly reminded that in fact, Baby Boomers are, of course, a huge array of individual human beings of all genders, experiences, races, nationalities, and levels of complicity in the dumpster fire we live in. Also, the irony for us Millennials is that Boomers are often either our parents or our grandparents. Often they are people we love, that we care about, they are the people who raised us, and that’s part of the complexity in looking for someone to blame, someone to step up and take responsibility, for someone to make a sacrifice. In a scenario like this one few of us are going to want the people who step up in this way to be our own parents. But, Kirkwood asks us, what is really best for the greater good of The Children?
Keep Good (Theatre) Company’s production of Lucy Kirkwood’s The Children plays at the Bus Stop Theatre (2203 Gottingen Street, Halifax). Their last performance is at 2:00pm on May 19th, 2019. Tickets are Pay What You Can and are available at this website.
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