The Cull

Arts Club Granville Island Stage until February 26, 2023
Tickets from $29 at www.artsclub.com

Posted February 11, 2023

Written by Michele Riml and Michael St. John Smith, The Cull could not have a finer production. Sensitive and super-smart direction by Mindy Parfitt and a dream team (set designer Amir Ofek, costume designer Alaia Hamer, lighting designer Ted Roberts and sound designer Owen Belton) make this an ear and eye-popping minimalist production that throws all the attention on the script and performance. It’s so clean and so tight.

Six barefoot actors; six white chairs; a huge, contemporary chandelier; a revolving floor; and a dinner plate, front and centre on the floor, piled high with obscenely large raw steaks. There’s no table, no dishes or wine glasses: nothing. But six actors standing with their arms at their sides, facing the audience, convince us they are at a table, they are drinking a very very expensive wine and enjoying a 25^th wedding anniversary dinner party honoring Emily (Dawn Petten) and Lewis (Stephen Lobo). The performers sit or stand, they move chairs around into various configurations as the evening’s conversations unwind: all six together; Nicole and Emily; Paul, Lewis and John; Paul and Nicole, etcetera. No one leaves the stage.

Who doesn’t love a story about a dinner party that goes sideways? Easy conversations that slide into heated debates then an absolute free-for-all. Hurt feelings. Anger. Tears. Noisy exits. Fun to watch, never to host.

Playwrights Riml and St. John Smith give us all this plus consumerism, entitlement, climate change and, yes, the culling of wolves.

The Cull is set in the 12,000 square foot home of Nicole (Meghan Gardiner) and Paul (Craig Erickson). Recently returned from a family holiday in Mexico, Nicole has just purchased an obviously outrageously expensive chandelier. She has expensive taste, buys bamboo napkins because “it’s the right thing to do”, runs marathons and is probably bankrupting the family with her spending. Husband Paul (Craig Erickson) is a loudmouth, trying to impress his guests with the steaks – organic, grass-fed Canada Grade A beef, but it’s hard for him to keep up with John (John Cassini) and Lynne (Jasmine Chen) who are seriously rich. They are on the cusp of developing her family’s vast Okanagan orchard into an upscale resort. A fortune – on top of the one they already have –  is about to be made.

Right away the antennae on some of us are up: should Okanagan orchards be cut down for playgrounds for the rich? Shades of Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard all over again.

The Cull addresses an interesting dilemma: can lifelong friends remain friends when they discover they no longer – or perhaps never did – share the same values and don’t live by the same moral code? These three couples all think they are trying to do “the right thing” for the planet but are they?

Do we like Nicole and Paul, Lynne and John? Not much although one has to grant John at least one thing: he admits he’s an “asshole”, he does not fool himself into thinking he’s a good person. Nicole and Paul are just kidding themselves when they think they are good, ethical people.  As Nicole, Gardiner is brittle but ultimately breakable; Erickson finds terrifying vulnerability in Paul. Cassini is cocksure as John; and Chen’s Lynne is, at first, obliging and accommodating but has an edge when the going gets going.

And then there’s Emily and Lewis. They have no money, are having a hard time making ends meet, live in a small house. He is a hunter, fisherman and a skilled woodworker. A mature student, Emily is trying to get certified as a teacher to help out with the family finances. Most of us can relate to these two. It helps, of course, that Petten’s performance is so girlish and innocent and sweet and that Lobo’s is quiet, gentle and respectful. Lewis is the heart and soul of The Cull and Lobo absolutely nails this character.

I really admire this production but a shift in focus overtakes Act 2 and I think it diminishes The Cull: what begins as a story about lifelong highschool friends coming to terms with ethical differences turns into a story about infidelity. That’s well-worn territory, theatrically speaking.  I realize it’s a different play that I wanted Riml and St. John Smith to write but it would have been a more provocative play – for me – had the playwrights stuck with the question as to whether friends can remain friends in spite of huge, passionately-held differences of opinion. Families are faced with this all the time. An anti-vaxxer in the family? A homophobic grandfather? How far are we willing to bend before we break?

But this is a superb production, masterfully directed and with terrific performances; it’s well worth seeing. If it prompts us to question our own values, so much the better. What are our own deal-breakers? Old growth logging? Open net fish farming? Lithium mining? Fracking?

Cull the wolves or let Nature have its way?