Homecoming

The Cultch to May 12, 2024
Tickets from $29 at 604-251-1363 or www.thecultch.com

Posted May 6, 2024

The world premiere of a new Canadian play is cause for celebration and Homecoming by Kamila Sediego is not only that but it also gives a voice to Filipino Canadians, an under-represented part of our community. When did you last hear Tagalog spoken or sung on stage?

In the play, young Ana (Rhea Casido), a first-generation Filipino Canadian, looks to her mother Tess (Carmela Sison) for answers about her roots in the Philippines. But answers are not forthcoming; Tess seems reluctant to talk about the past, including her own mother Eleanora (Aura Carcueva) and her estranged sister Vicky (Lissa Neptuno).

Ana eventually flies to the Philippines where she meets her funny, cheerful grandmother Eleanora and her uptight, miserable Aunt Vicky. There she finds some answers about her mother coming to Canada, thanks to a “nice lady” she met at the market who paid for her flight. What? Tess finally does make her way in her new country but it’s hard work and she soon finds herself pregnant with Ana although she admits she doesn’t know who the father is. (Frustratingly, this is not expanded upon. What are the implications?) And although Tess has always wanted to return home, she never does.

Playwright Sediego explains her work as “intentionally out-of-the-box” but this puts a lot of pressure on the audience. For about the first fifteen minutes we do not know who these characters are, how they are related to each other or even whether they exist in the same time frame. Time switches back and forth from when Tess and Vicky are youngsters being taught by their mother Eleanora to scale fish, to adult Tess comforting little Ana who has been teased at school, to Ana as an adult trying to connect with her Aunt Vicky who has reluctantly flown to Canada for the funeral of Tess.

It does, finally, come together but it’s challenging. What Homecoming asks us to consider is how those left behind suffer when one of the family seeks a better life elsewhere. And if leaving home brings such grief to everyone – including the one who left – is it worth it? That is the question Tess eventually asks herself.

Under the direction of Hazel Venzon, these are very committed performances. It’s impossible not to respond to effervescent Carcueva as grandmother Eleanora and Casido as Ana. Curious as I was about Sison’s Tess, the playwright doesn’t give us much to go on: why did Tess leave in the first place? It was a poor but happy life. How did she survive in Canada as a naïve, single mom with little education and still send money home? Too many loose ends. As for Aunt Vicky, it’s difficult to relate to someone who holds such a long, long grudge even into the next generation.

A large tree dominates David Oro’s set (lit by Jonathan Kim) and, once again, its relevance is not clear until later when we understand that the spirits of those who have died sometimes return as butterflies. Costume design is by Stephanie Kong. (Had four-year-old Vicky been wearing a skirt, it might have prevented me from thinking it was Tess’s little brother – only to discover later that it was Tess’s younger sister).

Homecoming appeared to have two or three endings before the curtain actually fell and that’s never a good thing. Some more dramaturgy would really help this Homecoming reach its potential.

Presented by Urban Ink (Vancouver) and The Cultch as part of the Femme Festival, Homecoming closes on May 12.