Middletown

Pacific Theatre to October 6, 2024
Tickets from $40 at 604-731-5518 or www.pacifictheatre.org
2-for-1 Night, Thursday, September 26 at 7:30pm
$20 accessibly-priced tickets for every performance

Posted September 23, 2024

I’m so grateful to Pacific Theatre for this Sticks and Stones Theatre guest production of Middletown by American playwright Will Eno. Sometimes – with some exceptions – it feels like a drought of exciting, provocative, innovative theatre in this town. Now, finally, here’s something to wrap our heads and hearts around.

It’s a risky play with a large cast of thirteen but, more to the point, under the co-direction of Sticks and Stones’ Jamie King and Arthi Chandra, Middletown is one of the most thought-provoking theatre pieces to grace a Vancouver stage for many months. It’s funny and sad and not always easy to figure out where it’s going. The staging – with video projections by Keely O’Brien and Daniel O’Shea – is visually stimulating. The performances – every one of them – are perfectly attuned to what is fractured, surreal dialogue packed with non sequiturs.  And the content – what happens between birth and death (a kind of Middletown) – provides something serious to take home after the show.

Echoes I couldn’t help but hear: from Thoreau: “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” From Beckett: we are born “astride the grave”. And from Shakespeare: “our little life is rounded with a sleep.”

If this doesn’t sound funny, strangely it is. It’s no wonder the New York Times’ reviewer Charles Isherwood called Eno “a Samuel Beckett for the Jon Stewart generation.”

Although Eno provides a narrative arc, that’s only part of what drives the play. It’s the words, the revelations, the  inner fears and longings that the characters actually say out loud, often to one another. “Sure, sometimes, I’ll just stare out a window, let a year go by, two years. For instance, right now I’m kind of between things. I’m between two crappy jobs, I’m sure – I just don’t know what the second one is, yet.” Or, “I was somebody’s golden child, somebody’s little hope. Now, I’m more just, you know, a local resident. Another earthling.” Or, “Night is hard, you know? It gets so quiet. I never know what I’m supposed to be listening to. But it does give me time to catch up on my needless worry.” Pithy truths wrapped in raw confessions.

In the play, Mary Swanson (Melissa Oei) has recently moved to Middletown; she tells the local Librarian (Anita Wittenberg) that she and her husband – who, tellingly, never makes an appearance – are hoping to start a family. Middletown locals that Mary meets include Mechanic (Zac Scott), a young down-and-outer who gave up drinking but recently started again; Cop (Mike Wasko), a burly tough-talking but soft-hearted policeman; Male Doctor (Peter Anderson) who is full of wisdom; and John Dodge (Jay Clift), a lost and lonely unemployed young guy. As the story unrolls, we think that Mary and John will find love but expect the unexpected. Middletown is not a romantic comedy. Eno is not that kind of writer and Middletown is not that kind of play.

Act 1 is long and tremendously clever and had me wondering if the play was ever going to go anywhere.  But I was engaged. Act 1 ends meta-theatrically with an audience (made up of cast members seated on chairs) apparently watching Middletown with us and commenting on it during intermission.  Freelancer: “It’s funny, though. Since you don’t know the end, you’re not sure what you’re in the middle of”. Exactly.

Act 2 dives deep. Thoughts on the mystery and wonder that is life – even from the perspective of space when astronaut Greg (Kevin Nguyen) looks back from his space capsule:  “Then you see planet Earth and – my God, she’s just so welcoming and good . . It, wow, it’s just this beautiful fragile thing, something a happy child would draw. It’s so blue.”

The evolving relationship between Mary and John is made achingly poignant by actors Oei and Clift. Oei’s Mary is so sweet, so hesitant, so eager to be good while Clift’s John is lost, so lost. Never has “can you hold me? Just for a – can I hold you?” resonated so heartbreakingly.

This excellent cast – playing multiple roles – is rounded out with Steffanie Davis, Scout Lobo, Lisa Goebel, Zoe Hirtle, Kaxja Wallberg, Kaitlyn Yott and Corina Akeson (understudy).

I was initially disappointed where Middletown went in the end but I’m getting over it. It felt ‘soft’ but I know it to be true: birth is the most magical, mysterious event in all our lives. Middleton has heart. It celebrates life even when, as one of the meta-theatre audience members says, “People know what happens.” And we do. It’s the middle part, between being born and dying, that’s interesting, that’s challenging. As Mary asks the doctor, “Can I ask you . . . sorry, this is so general, but . . . I mean, what should I do? How should I be?” His reply? “So, forgiveness, forgiveness and love, and you’re all set.” Sounds so easy, doesn’t it?