The Animal Kingdom

 

Vancity Culture Lab (The Cultch) to September 20, 2025

Tickets from $25 (students, seniors) at 604-251-1363 or www.thecultch.com

Posted September 14, 2025

My first thought after the curtain fell on the evening I saw The Animal Kingdom: the playwright must have had first-hand experience to be able to write with such surgical precision about this dysfunctional family’s ordeal with depression and self-harm.

I don’t know whether young British playwright Ruby Thomas actually has gone through a similar situation but The Animal Kingdom has such a ring of authenticity to it, the audience feels it could be on the outside of a two-way window, listening in on 21-year-old Sam (Mozi Mayaleh), his therapist Daniel (Richard Meen) and Sam’s family – mother Rita (Advah Soudack), father Tim (Abraham Asto) and younger sister Sofia (Lili Martin).

Following a suicide attempt, Sam has been an inpatient in a clinic and is beginning therapy for six weeks. When we first meet him, Sam is sullen and silent, and we feel there is anger tearing him apart. His eyes are dark, his posture guarded, and he makes no eye contact with Daniel. After their first session together, the therapist suggests Sam’s family be included from now on, indicating it might be helpful.

In the next session we meet them. His mother Rita, a latter-day flower child in beads and flowing shawls and scarves, never shuts up. She hovers around “Sammy”, offers him food, talks about how “smart” he is. Tim, his father (fairly recently divorced from Rita), is a suit-and-tie guy, wearing expensive leather shoes, hair slicked down with gel. Nervous. Mono-syllabic. When asked by the therapist about the household in which he grew up, he replies with one word. “Clean.”

Sister Sofia initially says little, obviously caught in the middle of this unhappy family, and trying her best to normalize the situation. But a late-in-the-play revelation blows everything apart and we suddenly get a window into Sofia. It’s heartbreaking.

Does Sam have a hope in hell of getting through this?

But here’s where playwright Thomas reels us in: even as Rita drives us crazy with her non-stop blithering, we come to understand how she ended up being the way she is. Similarly, Tim: he’s really easy to dislike but that “Clean” speaks volumes about the family he grew up in. We may not grow to like this couple – especially with Rita perpetually sniping away at Tim and him ‘manspreading’ his legs – but we understand them and can empathize with them. Sofia is simply doing the best she can to survive the family dynamic, but homosexual Sam has buckled under it all. At the outset, he can barely speak. The action moves week to week.

This is not a weepy play – although there may be one incident that brings you close – nor is it simple. Thomas’s script feels searingly, even clinically, real, and the performances are flawless. Indeed, without such a skilled cast, the play would not work as well as it does. As the therapist Daniel, Meen is relaxed and unflappable, a kind and sympathetic character. Soudack’s Rita drives us nuts, but the playwright shows such compassion toward the character, that we, too, are moved by Rita. Martin, as Sofia, has little to say throughout the beginning of the play but a revelation – a text message from Sam – suddenly thrusts her character into the forefront and Martin’s transition feels completely organic.

Although Mayaleh has been in various films in the last couple of years, he makes his stage debut as Sam in The Animal Kingdom – so-called because Sam is a zoology student at college and he makes references to bird and animal behaviour,  including  homosexuality amongst animals. It’s an impressive debut without a trace of artificiality or ‘actorly’ technique. Under Christy Webb’s direction for Christy Webb Productions, the play and the production fuse to provide a window on a family situation that we all hope never comes to our door.  Best of all, playwright Thomas offers a nuanced conclusion, avoiding a cheap, simplistic or sentimental ending.

The Animal Kingdom is a guest production at The Cultch.