CHILD-ish

 

Pacific Theatre to March 9, 2024
Tickets from $15 at 604-731-5518 or www.pacifictheatre.org  

Posted February 17, 2024

Kids say the darndest things. Ask any fond grandmother.  Art Linkletter probably made a load of money interviewing kids for his long-running tv comedy series Kids Say The Darndest Things that aired from 1959-1967. It was huge on the “aawww” factor with nothing too profound unless you subscribe to the old maxim, ‘Out of the mouth of babes.’ Or the biblical ‘A little child shall lead them.’

There were a couple of revivals of Linkletter’s show – one starring the now infamous Bill Cosby from 1998-2000 and a one-season wonder hosted by Tiffany Haddish from 2019-2020.

Enter multi-award winning Canadian playwright Sunny Drake who conducted a hundred interviews with forty-one kids aged 5-12. A thousand pages later and a lot of editing by Drake and a few friends, Pacific Theatre presents the world premiere of CHILD-ish, directed by Lois Anderson, produced by Pacific Theatre,  presented by John Fluevog, and performed by grownup actors Craig Erickson, Tasha Faye Evans, Tom Pickett, James Yi and Maki Yi. Sara Vickruck is the only adult playing an adult – the playwright/interviewer Drake. The actors/kids are asked questions about life and they respond with the innocent, always charming, often surprising perspective of children. The performers all wear suits. Some wear ties. They speak the verbatim words of the kids that were interviewed but they speak them in the voices of adults.

Is this a play as we generally think of it? No. Is it entertaining? Wildly for some; mildly for some of us. Of course it’s charming when Craig Erickson, as one of the kids, tells us his grandpa is in a ‘nursery’ home. And it’s cute when James Yi, another of the kids, says he was excited to come to Canada because, “They said everyone in Canada has a pool.” And it’s sweet to hear Tom Pickett, as a kid, tell the interviewer that he’s going to marry several of his friends if they’ll have him.

Things get darker as the interviews proceed. Where do you go when you die? Do you know anyone who has committed suicide? And what about climate change? One voice I really responded to was Tasha Faye Evans, as an indigenous kid, who simply rages with a long shriek at the adult world’s failure to look after the planet.

At one point the kids, now seemingly weary of the process, turn the tables on the interviewer. “What are you doing with your life?” “Are you brave?” Big awkward questions.

In a way, CHILD-ish ends the way it begins: on a lighter note. At the outset, Vickruck, as the writer/interviewer Drake, describes an incident that actually happened to him and that led to the creation of CHILD-ish. From a recent interview with Stir magazine Drake is quoted as saying,

“I arrived at the house, and this seven-year-old was sitting on the sofa sobbing, like bawling her eyes out. So of course, I ask, ‘What’s wrong?’ And she shares this very epic story of heartbreak and betrayal. I was actually quite worried about her—she was totally crushed that this kid in her class didn’t want to marry her. And I’m watching her just really in her body, going through this heartbreak.” But within minutes, the girl is doing somersaults on the sofa. “And it took about two minutes of somersaults and handstands, and she’d gone from this utter devastation, to then she’s giggling, to then minutes later, she’s literally over it. And I was just like, ‘Wow, I need a crash course from children, holy!’”

After delivering the kids’ thirty item manifesto, beginning with ‘Buy more cake’ and ‘Be yourself. Don’t try to be someone else’ and ending with ‘Listen to kids! Listen to kids! LISTEN TO KIDS’, there’s a dance party to which the audience is encouraged to participate.

Audience participation is not my thing.  My inner child has become a grumpy grandmother who worries mightily about war, famine, climate change and what kind of world we are leaving for our children and grandchildren.  Most of the audience, however, got into it in a big way, metaphorically somersaulting on the sofa and doing handstands.