Tag Archives: cathy derkach

Peter Quilter’s Autumn – delightfully specific

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Even Gilchrist’s set for Autumn, at Shadow Theatre, with lighting by Rory Turner.

Lana Michelle Hughes’ first directing gig as the new Artistic Director of Shadow Theatre is the poignant and relatable portrait of two bickering sisters, Autumn. Not “middle-aged sisters”, because as Rose (Karen Johnson Diamond) points out, sixty is only middle-aged if you’re going to live til a hundred and twenty. Oof.

Slightly younger sister Kathryn (Cathy Derkach) arrives for a planned visit, filling up the space with suitcases and drama. Rose tidies her away “You’re in the big bedroom” and settles her down and responds with gentle snark to Catherine’s criticisms of everything, from the snacks to the wine to the plans for the garden. Catherine mostly doesn’t even listen, busy with attention-grabbing stories about her current divorce and advice Rose hasn’t asked for.

We learn that this isn’t Rose’s home – they’re meeting at their late parents’ second home or retirement cottage. Many of the specific details in the set (Even Gilchrist) now make more sense – the main room is a cozy and appealing space with exposed beams and brick, but it feels like it was decorated in the 1980s or 1990s, with two comfortable non-matching recliners, shelving units holding everything from a cassette player and tapes to a worn Trivial Pursuit game, prints on the walls and a white-board calendar on the fridge.

And they’re meeting to plan and prepare for Catherine’s daughter Imogen’s short-notice (shotgun) wedding, which they’re going to host at the house. The action takes place in the 10-day period between Catherine’s arrival and the wedding. Long enough for the sisters to poke at each other’s sore spots, and get to know more about each other’s current lives, reveal some assumptions and address some conflicts.

When you hear the basics of this story – two bickering sisters, one daughter/ niece’s arrival anticipated, a handsome young neighbour to ogle while doing yardwork – you might recall one of the plays in last year’s Shadow season, Kristen da Silva’s Where You Are, a four-hander with similar characters. But I thought the concept was rich enough and the characterizations compelling enough in Autumn that I was completely engaged, and eventually satisfied. Both performers portrayed their characters with prickly affection and amusing consistency. The costume choices (Ami Farrow) helped me get to know who they were, Kathryn in blouses and blazer, skirt or dress pants and heels, tasteful solids, but Rose in colourful drapey things and Birkenstocks, undyed hair in braids.

But unlike Where You Are, in which the audience gets to see the sisters interacting with the daughter / niece (Nikki Hulowski) and the young neighbour (Brennan Campbell), in Autumn there are only two performers on stage. Kathryn’s daughter Imogen and her fiance Daniel, and the gardener Barry, are all part of the narrative, but we don’t exactly see any of them, and that’s not a distraction. Apart from a few stage-crew hands delivering props through doors, these three characters are evoked entirely by the very specific actions and gazes of Derkach and Johnson-Diamond, with support from the lighting (Rory Turner) and sound (Lindsey Walker) atmospheres. The set includes sliding doors to the yard, with lattice-top fence behind and barely-visible greenery behind that. The lighting and the music and sound selections make it easy to believe that a wedding’s taking place in the garden, and then that the newlyweds are passing through the cottage, collecting their motorbike helmets, and heading down the driveway, as we watch the relieved mother and aunt hover on the edge of the party and send them off. The director and performers have convincingly created the non-visible elements of the story and followed them through with consistency.

There are happy endings in Autumn, the kind of resolutions that are satisfying because the imperfect characters stay who they are, just with a little more understanding of each other and self-awareness. And maybe it landed more strongly with me because I’m thinking of my own faraway siblings and niblings in my birthday week – but I enjoyed it.

Autumn is playing at the Varscona Theatre until May 24th, with tickets here.

Jupiter – a Colleen Murphy premiere

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Ellie Heath, Brian Dooley, and Monk Northey in Colleen Murphy’s Jupiter, at Theatre Network. Set and costume design Tessa Stamp, lighting design Larissa Poho. Photo by Ian Jackson.

In comparison to Colleen Murphy’s other work that I’m familiar with, Jupiter has a happy ending. That is, not everyone is dead, and the ones who are not dead are at least speaking to each other.

Unlike in Bright Burning (published title I hope my heart burns first) or in The Society for the Destitute Presents Titus Bouffonius, or the offstage massacre that drives The December Man, the deaths discussed in Jupiter are spread over a period of more than 50 years, counting things that happened before the play started. Is it still more than one family’s share of problems and tragedies and bad luck? Maybe.

Bradley Moss directs the world premiere of Jupiter, in Theatre Network’s mainstage Nancy Power Theatre at the Roxy. The human cast is all familiar to Edmonton theatregoers: Brian Dooley, Cathy Derkach, Ellie Heath, Gabe Richardson, and Dayna Lea Hoffmann. The newcomer is Monk Northey, a large, beautiful, and well-behaved Field Retriever playing the part of family dog Axel.

There are scenes in three eras, all set in the family’s small house. The set design (Tessa Stamp) is very clever. It feels like peeking in to a private space, glimpsing the kitchen, front hall, and bedroom-hallway behind the main playing space of the small living room. The dialogue and movements were so specific that I felt like I could picture the back door and backyard and basement stairs as well. We can almost feel the sticky-oppressive heat that ramps up the frustrations.

Ellie Heath plays Emma, the daughter of Violet and Winston. She’s 16 in the first era, bursting with enthusiasm for doing science experiments and dreaming of going to med school in the big city. “Why do I have to have such weird kids?” grumbles slaughterhouse-worker dad Dooley. Seeing hints of how her life might unfold, and then seeing her 15 years later and 20 years after that was especially poignant. I’ve often seen Heath play young characters – she was Alice in the Citadel’s Through the Looking Glass, a young girl in the production of Closer directed by Keltie Brown Forsyth, a sulky teenager in Shadow’s production of Queen Lear, and a precocious teenager in one of the Die-Nasty soap-opera seasons last year. Heath’s shift from teenage-Emma to her older self, dealing with the consequences of the night of her brother’s 21st birthday, was impressive, with credible changes in voice and body language.

Violet (Derkach), Toby (Richardson), and Ava (Hoffmann) round out the family constellation, along with various pets onstage and off. Tensions are hinted at, awful things happen. Family members try to cope in the short term, and are permanently affected, as seen in the futures.

If you are a person who wants to be warned about whether specific awful things might happen or be discussed in a play, you should always ask beforehand about a Colleen Murphy play. If you would prefer watching the characters and trying to guess where the story might be going, having that chest-clenching top-of-the-roller-coaster moment of horror and “Are they actually going there?”, then don’t get spoilers. Colleen Murphy sometimes does go there. Different audience members will find different parts disturbing. And I’m not heartless and unmoved; I’m trying to preserve the surprises for people who want them.

Jupiter plays at the Roxy until April 20th, with tickets available here.