The Globe and Mail - January 14, 2011

"This: Sometimes words speak louder than actions"
Melissa James Gibson's play adds an authentic voice to the urban-angst canon Marsha Lederman

★ ★ ★ 1/2 (out of 4)

Popular culture has long been rife with New York apartment explorations of adultery, loneliness, failing relationships and other midlife disappointments, in everything from Woody Allen's films to Will & Grace. With her play This, which had its Canadian premiere at the Vancouver Playhouse Theatre on Thursday (it opened off-Broadway in late 2009), Canadian-born-and-raised playwright Melissa James Gibson adds an authentic - and entertaining - voice to the urban-angst canon.

It's been a year since Jane's (Megan Follows) husband died, leaving her a single mother. Her best friend, Marrell (Karen Holness), has her over so she can fix her up with Jean-Pierre (Fabrice Grover), a French physician with Doctors Without Borders. Marrell and her husband, Tom (Todd Thomson), aren't exactly a model of marital bliss: They have a baby that sleeps in 15-minute increments, so they're exhausted and at each other's throats. Also present for the wine-soaked gathering is Alan (Dmitry Chepovetsky), their funny, self-deprecating gay friend.

The tone - fast-paced and funny with a strong hint of danger - is set immediately, as the not-so-smug marrieds convince a reluctant Jane to play a game. She leaves the room, they will concoct a story; when she returns, she has to ask questions to figure out what the story is. But it's a trick - or, at least, a joke: There's no story, in fact, and their "yes," "no" or "maybe" answers will be determined by whether Jane's questions end in a vowel, a consonant or a "y."

This may sound somewhat complicated and not very exciting on paper, but it's a wonderful device, serving as an introduction to Jane's state of mind (her questions reveal more than the answers ever could) and also providing the audience with some genuine laughs.

In the days following the game, things get complicated, and the delicate balance among this long-time circle of friends is threatened by the actions of two lonely, scared characters facing midlife with a desperation they may not have thought possible when they started out on their paths.

These situations and issues are hardly unexamined on the stage, but they ring true in This, thanks to an excellent script and a superb, nuanced performance by Follows as a single mother trying to keep it together for her daughter, but stuck in her grief because, really, she has refused to acknowledge it.

Under Amiel Gladstone's direction, the one-hour-and-40-minute play (performed without an intermission) soars by, never dragging or losing its way.

Chepovetsky is wonderful as Alan, raising the disillusioned-with-life-single-gay-man character beyond cliché - and he is very, very funny. Thomson portrays the how-did-I-get-here unhappily married husband with honesty and understatement. He is quietly lost, and despite some less-than-honourable actions, which we will not disclose here, he earns the audience's compassion. As the activist doctor, Grover delivers the play's most chilling line, shattering the world of self-involved privilege by providing a more global perspective on what constitutes true trouble.

Holness, on opening night, did not keep pace with her co-stars, seeming less comfortable in her role, and less believable, with a glaring slip-up: pronouncing "Brita" with a short "i." This may not sound egregious, but coming a few minutes after she delivers a spirited argument to her husband and friends declaring the proper pronunciation of the water filter to be "Breeta," with a long "e," it was jarring.

The wordplay in the work is clever and feels authentic; never does it seem as if the playwright is showing off. Why wouldn't well-educated, Socrates-quoting characters make witty observations about such expressions as "I just got the baby down," or lecture on the proper pronunciation of a water filter? (The Canadian in me wonders whether the frequency with which the characters say they're sorry was a shout-out to Gibson's homeland.)

But words are not just for play; they also carry a great weight. They are powerful - so much so that changing a single word in a sentence can significantly alter its meaning: "Because it's only been a year" is a far cry from "Because it's been a whole year."

Language is so powerful that one small, simple word - "this" - can represent an enormous, complicated state of affairs; the word can mean everything, and change everything.

The Globe and Mail - January 27, 2011

THE WEEK IN THEATRE
Michael Harris

This

For the past decade, Megan Follows (the original Anne, of Green Gables fame) has had a strong showing on stage, starring in Ibsen's proto-feminist A Doll's House or Caryl Churchill's nearly-post-feminist Top Girls. And now she delivers another harassed-yet-fascinating woman in a strong Canadian premiere of Melissa James Gibson's This. Jane (Follows's part) is a middle-aged widow and mother caught up in her own grieving and the entanglements of adultery among friends. Follows does beautifully and, in the role of the drunk gay guy who cuddles up to you and serves as truth-teller, Dmitry Chepovetsky delivers a truly funny Alan. Vancouver Playhouse, to Jan. 29 (vancouverplayhouse.com).

Source: The Globe and Mail

The Vancouver Sun - January 17, 2011

"Slick set of laughs make This worth catching"
Peter Birnie

Smart and sassy, This is a hip comedy so easy to digest that it feels a little like fast food. In a Playhouse production marking the Canadian debut of this 2009 work, the emphasis is on light laughs in lieu of much depth.

Vancouver-born playwright Melissa James Gibson now calls New York home, and she's clearly out to craft something with plenty of Big Apple bite to it.

Her characters lead interesting urban lives as they interact at a gallop — litres of wine pouring forth to fuel lots of bitchy back-and-forth dialogue — and Gibson's good ear for the brittle exchanges of often-bitter thirtysomethings brings us lots of laughs.

Megan Follows stars as Jane, widowed for almost a year and stuck in shocked stasis with her late husband's cremated remains still sitting in a paper bag atop the fridge. Although she's best known for growing up on TV as Anne of Green Gables, Follows is a perceptive stage actress who allows herself to look the part of a tired woman in need of a figurative kick in the butt before middle age sets in.

Said kick could come from a French doctor (Fabrice Grover, showing a suitably Gallic combination of charm and arrogance), or it might spring from the rocky marriage of Jane's friends. Todd Thomson and Karen Holness have a fine chemistry as new parents near exhaustion from tending to the baby, and each also exhibits an easy way with making their characters feel real.

Holness is particularly attuned to the comedic timing of funny lines about motherhood and marriage and the moodiness of her gal pal. It's also great to hear her play a baby grand and sing some poignant jazz written for the show by Peter Eldridge.

Thomson proves his true worth as an actor by giving the husband just enough rope to hang himself as a confused mix of manly testosterone, indecisive domesticity and a weak-kneed need for the wandering eye. The genuine complexity of this guy nicely counterpoints the utter flight of fancy that is Gibson's gay character.

Enter Dmitry Chepovetsky, who steals the show in the role of Jane's homo honcho. As the friend who's always ready with a perfectly delivered zinger, Chepovetsky keeps us in constant stitches, his sharp delivery of what is largely a stereotypical stock role (now apparently a requirement of any modern comedy purporting to be hip) always uncovering nuance in nonsense.

As director, Amiel Gladstone keeps an eye on his watch so the momentum won't falter, and it's pretty clear why — let This lag and audiences would realize just how shallow the supposedly complex story really is. Less a case of artistic craftsmanship than slightly cynical manufacturing of a Neil Simon comedy for a new generation, This is best presented at a romp that's not far from farce.

To that end, Alison Green's big set somewhat complicates things by giving over the whole Playhouse stage to one apartment, then adding an upstairs component for other scenes.

Too much action plays out upstage, up in the air, when we should be feeling that all this fun-with-angst is taking place, as it does in New York, in your face.

© Copyright (c) The Vancouver Sun

Source: The Vancouver Sun

Straight.com - January 14, 2011

"Despite some laughs, Vancouver Playhouse's This is too superficial and self-obsessed"
Colin Thomas

This Playhouse production of Melissa James Gibson's This, which features a bunch of self-obsessed urbanites in their late 30s, drove me nuts.

Jane's husband has been dead for almost a year when her old college pals, Marrell and Tom, invite her to a party. They've also invited the suavely French Jean-Pierre, who works with Doctors Without Borders. Marrell hopes that Jane will have sex with Jean-Pierre—mostly because that's what Marrell would like to do. Mutual friend Alan, a wisecracking gay man—we are a staunch and witty people—is also present.

In a party game that Marrell and Tom insist on playing, Jane is invited to guess at a story that the others have made up. What she doesn't know is that they haven't really invented a tale, so, psychologically duped, she ends up revealing her own story. It's about a widow who is lusting after a married male friend. Distressed, Jane leaves, but a sexually itchy Tom soon arrives at her door and, in a fulfillment of the game's prophecy, the two have sex standing up in her hallway. Jane feels badly for most of the rest of the play.

The first annoying thing about This is its rhythmic artificiality. The dialogue is full of repetition, simultaneous speech, and little conversational curlicues that have only a tangential relationship to communication. The style is superficial without being especially witty. It feels like Gibson repeats the same comic device about missed meaning a thousand times: when Jane refers to a neighbour who has a cat, Alan asks, "The super intense one?", which prompts Jean-Pierre to ask, "The cat?", to which Alan replies, "The neighbour." Be grateful that I'm only citing one example.

The characters are dimly aware of emotional and social realities. Desperate to make a change in his life, Alan considers doing good—or maybe adding another L to his name. Unfortunately, the social criticism implicit in this construction isn't sustained. Jean-Pierre takes one good swipe at the others' petty concerns, but for the most part, the playwright amuses herself by polishing the surfaces of her characters' narcissism. There are a couple of runs of funny dialogue in This, including the exchange during the party game, but they are exceptions.

Undeniably, the playwright engages large emotional dynamics—including betrayal and grief—but the batch of friends she has invented wisecrack so relentlessly and self-consciously that the fit doesn't work. Imagine real death or disease on Seinfeld.

Fortunately, under Amiel Gladstone's direction, there's some strong acting in this Playhouse production. Megan Follows brings charming ease and appealing honesty to her performance as Jane. And even though I detested the character, I appreciated Dmitry Chepovetsky's restrained, note-perfect performance as Alan.

Alison Green contributes an awkward two-tier set; the scenes on the upper level feel far away and it looks like they were impossible for Adrian Muir to light.

Oh well.

Source: Straight.com

North Shore News - January 21, 2011

"Amusing This a little on the 'dinky' side"
Martin Millerchip

I enjoyed This experience, laughing throughout, but suspect I will forget it fairly quickly.

I'm still debating whether that is because of the script or the Playhouse production.

Playwright Melissa James Gibson grew up in North Vancouver, a Handsworth student from a political and writerly family. She went to New York 28 years ago to study as an actress but decided she preferred writing scripts to interpreting them. The New York Times lavished praise on This -- her ninth script, and a commissioned work -- dubbing it the best new play off-Broadway early in the 2009 season.

What I was thinking as Gibson sketched out her characters in This: Sometimes it's easier to succeed somewhere else than your home town; sometimes it's hard to bring foreign success home; maybe New York 30-somethings really are this witty and have such amusing conversations.

Laughter seems to be the preoccupation of director Amiel Gladstone. An audience-pleasing choice to be sure, and Gibson's clever writing gives him lots to work with -- "My life is an American movie and I want it to be a foreign film." But the four main characters have issues to be dealt with, and the sadness those issues should create is more often expressed as irritation, maybe because this production has its foot on the gas too often or Gibson works too hard to lighten a moment with a joke.

Or maybe I'm just not 30-something any more.

Plot information coming now and since This is worth seeing, I'm warning you.

Marrell and Tom are trying to cheer Jane up. Her husband has been dead for a year and Marrell has a man she'd like Jane to date because, well, Marrell is attracted to him. Marrell and Tom have a baby that won't sleep longer than 15 minutes and are clearly stressed. Marrell, Jane and her roommate and other best friend Alan all went to college together. Tom was there too -- as a workman. He also fancies Jane. After a psychological party game that leaves Jane feeling tricked and unhappy, they have sex. Jane spends the rest of the play feeling guilty around Marrell for having betrayed her best friend.

Ultimately she confesses and then undergoes a catharsis of grief. That scene is Megan Follows' best as Jane, but the impetus for the bombshell confession feels abrupt in this production. Again, I felt there may be more nuance to explore in the christening scene that triggers the confession than director Gladstone does.

Follows is far removed from the Anne of Green Gables role that both made her and dogged her, but, from a distance at least, still plays younger than her years. Again, I'm talking nuance, but it worked against the weight of Jane's story for me. And once we come to understand that it's Jane's story that matters, not Marrell's or Tom's, there isn't much else to invest in. Gibson gives Alan all the best lines in the play, but as a character that would like to change but is incapable of it, Alan is relegated to an agent for change in others. Nevertheless, Dmitry Chepovetsky creates a character out of the cliché of the gay best friend that isn't just based on the laugh lines -- Jessie adjudicators should take note.

In fact, all of the acting here is top rate -- and Karen Holness as Marrell sings as well as she acts. But because Jean-Pierre (Fabrice Grover) is somewhat two-dimensional and Tom's story in This remains unfinished, I'll be curious to read another of Gibson's scripts featuring a hetero male in a central role.

Alison Green's set is a bit of a puzzler, with Jane's apartment perched on top of the main playing area of Tom and Marrell's living room like an afterthought.

It's barely dressed, barely lit and looks like the budget ran out. My reservations aside, this This is excellent entertainment -- but the action likely shouldn't feel as "dinky".as Jean-Pierre describes.

© Copyright (c) North Shore News

Source: North Shore News

The Vancouver Courier - January 19, 2011

"Urban drama satisfies despite this and that"
Jo Ledingham

A line mid-play and thrown away by an underdeveloped character in This grabbed me: "This," indicating a file that contains, presumably, details of yet another Third World country in peril, "is upsetting," snarls Jean-Pierre. "This," scornfully indicating his shallow, self-absorbed friends, "is dinky."

But This goes on well after Jean-Pierre (Fabrice Grover), a physician with Doctors Without Borders, delivers that stinger and walks out on his friends. It's only one idea--and not the central one--playwright Melissa James Gibson is working on. Had that been her focus, I would credit her with sucking us all in with crisp, funny dialogue, crackling wordplay, jazzy music and then forcing us to re-examine what's really important: characters Merrell and Tom's baby who only sleeps 15 minutes at a time or babies dying of AIDS in faraway places? Jane and Tom's infidelity or the epidemic of rapes in Rwanda?

But the play goes on to make another, different point about surviving the death of a husband and getting on with serving the needs of the living--in this case, a child. And that's a worthy--if less earth shattering--theme, too.

The play opens with Tom (Todd Thomson) insisting on playing a parlour game. Friend and dinner guest Jane (Megan Follows) reluctantly agrees to leave the room while the rest of them--Tom, Merrell (Karen Holness), Jean-Pierre and another friend Alan (Dmitry Chepovetsky)--make up a story. However, they only pretend to make up a story. Asking questions that can only be answered with "yes" or "no," Jane is supposed to figure it out. Of course, she ends up revealing her own, inner drama and when she catches on, she leaves angrily. It feels like a contrived opener, but the playwright cleverly repeats the game later--only the second time it's for real.

Gibson doesn't make it easy to invest in these characters. Merrell dithers over the condition of the water filter in the kitchen, Tom is a lout and Jane is decent but distant. Follows eventually breaks through her character's carefully built shell when Jane confronts the irrevocability of death; I was deeply moved by Follows' performance at that point, but it comes late.

While we don't especially relate to Alan, he's a clever dramatic device: he has a neurological condition that gives him perfect recall of every conversation he's ever heard. So when Tom and Merrell replay an argument they had in Alan's presence, he corrects them on exactly what was said. Chepovetsky takes the role, does a Woody Allen on it and makes this urban drama extremely funny.

Directed by Amiel Gladstone, these are all strong performances. Grover might have brought more depth--or at least the suggestion of depth--to Jean-Pierre, but to be fair, the playwright doesn't give him much to work with. Holness, as new mother/lounge singer Merrell, really is a jazz singer so it's a treat to see her move over to the grand piano stage left and sing the playwright's lyrics to music written for this production by Peter Eldridge.

Alison Green's set is awkward with Jane's apartment set like a box above Merrell and Tom's living room. In the play's final moments when our hearts should be going out to Jane, Follows is too far away for the moment to be intimate.

This multitude of reservations aside, I liked--and admired--This a lot. I laughed, Chepovetsky is terrific and seeing Follows--after years of seeing her as Anne of Green Gables--is informative and satisfying. She's a mature, consummate actor. And if Gibson didn't write the play I really wanted, that's my problem.

© Copyright (c) Vancouver Courier

Source: The Vancouver Courier

Review Vancouver

"Review: 'This'"
John Jane

The Canadian Premiere of THIS got plenty of positive buzz even before the show opened that couldn't have been altogether unforeseen. The prime reason, of course, is the inclusion of Megan Follows in the central role of Jane. It was Ms Follows that stole our hearts as the carrot-topped waif, Anne Shirley in the television adaptation of Lucy Maude Montgomery's classic novel, Anne of Green Gables. Now forty-two and in mid-career, she has developed into the all-round actor that we all expected she would. The pre-opening buzz was helped along by the homecoming (of sorts) of playwright Melissa James Gibson, roughly the same age as Follows, who grew up in North Vancouver and incidentally, is the daughter of former B.C. Liberal Party leader, Gordon Gibson.

THIS, directed by Amiel Gladstone with original music by Peter Eldridge, straddles a narrow divide between comedy and drama. Cataclysmic issues, like the premature death of a spouse and the betrayal of a best friend are treated with humour. Adversely, moments of joy, like friends taking part in an innocent parlour game suddenly go awry and turn into a minor disaster.

Gibson's play with its overly simple title is a single act ensemble piece that follows four educated and artistic, thirty-something New Yorkers who have each reached a crossroads in their lives. Jane is a recent widow with a 9-year-old daughter; Tom and Marrell (Todd Thomson and Karen Holness) are a bi-racial couple and new to the demands of parenthood and going through a difficult time in their marriage. The other member of the foursome, Alan (Dmiry Chepovetsky) is a quirky, gay Jew who possesses the gift of Hyperthymestic Syndrome (actually, it's as much a curse as a gift) that allows him to recall with absolute detail events and conversations from his personal past.

Outside of this group dynamic is Jean-Pierre (Fabrice Grover), a single French national and a member of Médecins sans Frontières (Doctors without Borders). Jean-Pierre is invited to a get-together by Marrell as a potential partner for Jane. The character initially seems superfluous, particularly after a ludricrous French telephone conversation that adds nothing to the storyline, but the role is pivotal in putting into perspective the difference between THIS situation of his introspective new chums and the global issues he must come to terms with in the humanitarian aid organization.

Megan Follows and Karen Holness turn in solid performances, especially when playing off each other. Ms. Follows in particular shows her star quality in the play's most poignant scene at the end in which her character, who has at last managed to shed the affliction of grief, declares to her sleeping daughter that she is "finally back." But it's Chepovetsky as the acerbic Alan with his lack of self-esteem contention who is the scene-sealer. His ‘gift' of autobiographical memory provides an amusing mechanism for cutting through the slanted interpretations in arguments between Tom and Marrell.

Alison Green's crowded two-tier set of Tom and Marrell's loft apartment in the midway throes of renovation, doubles as the lounge bar where Marrell works as a jazz musician. Jane's apartment awkwardly mounted on the upper level seems almost an afterthought.

The group's parlour game may well work as a metaphor for life itself. As Jane purports in the opening scene "You make the rules sound simple, which means they're not" - rules are usually only simple to those who get to make them up.

Source: Review Vancouver

Vancouver Plays - January 2011

"Review: 'This'"
Jerry Wasserman

There's something in the air in the USA these days. And if its writers are to be trusted, it sure ain't happiness. Whether the recession is to blame or Sarah Palin or the general decline of the Empire, last week's back-to-back openings of Craig Wright's The Pavilion and Melissa James Gibson's This tell us that the American generation looking at 40 is suffering some bad pre-mid-life blues.

An expatriate Vancouverite living in New York, Gibson has a great ear for the obsessive verbal habits of New Yorkers: their tendency to worry ideas like a dog a bone, to pick at language for its multiple meanings, to psychoanalyze themselves and others the way Vancouverites dissect the play of the Canucks. Her play, set in a slightly grungy Manhattan apartment designed by Alison Green, has some terrific scenes and excellent comic moments. But it feels as if the anomie of her characters' lives became the structural principle of her script, which drifts badly in the second half. The strong cast of Amiel Gladstone's Playhouse production fortunately showcases the play's solid comic spine.

Jane (Megan Follows) and jazz singer Marrell (Karen Holness) have been best friends since college and remain tight with their cynical gay Jewish pal, Alan (a hilarious Dmitry Chepovetsky, whose paranoid riff on the identity question "What do you do?" concludes, "I drink a lot, I read a lot, and I jerk off with Olympian frequency"). Marrell has married blue-collar carpenter Tom (Todd Thomson) and they've just had a kid, but their marriage has gone sour. Jane, raising an adolescent daughter (offstage) by herself, hasn't really dealt with the death of her husband a year earlier. Marrell has brought along debonair French Doctor Without Borders Jean-Pierre (Fabrice Grover) to set him up with Jane. Things don't work out too well, although lessons are learned—Jean-Pierre puts their petty personal concerns ("this way of being") in perspective at the end—and it's a good bet that the friendships will survive their various strains.

Some of the cleverest parts of the script, in the best sense of the word clever, frame the play. In a great opening scene the friends play a game in which Jane thinks she's guessing what happened in a story that she's actually making up herself. Near the end as Marrell and Tom reconstruct an argument, Alan, who was there, corrects their self-serving version of events with his photographic memory ("No, Marrell, what you actually told him was ‘Fuck off and die'"). In between, though, an awful lot of time gets marked, including two scenes where the action just stops for Marrell to play piano and sing a couple of not very good songs, although Holness has a lovely jazz voice.

Kudos to the Playhouse for staging the Canadian premiere of This. It's a bracing and amusing reminder that being young (yeah, 40 looks young from where I'm sitting) and American isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Source: Vancouver Plays

Gay Vancouver - January 15, 2011

"This - entertaining & funny but ultimately forgettable"
Mark Robins

While middle age regret is being explored over at the Firehall, the Vancouver Playhouse production of This explores middle age angst, an entertaining, sometimes very funny, but ultimately forgettable look at approaching your forties.

Gathered for a dinner party at Marrell's (Karen Holness) and Tom's (Todd Thomson) home, college friends Alan (Dmitry Chepovetsky) and Jane (Megan Follows) are about to participate in an after-dinner game. Added to the mix is Jean-Pierre (Fabrice Grover), a very French member of Doctor Without Borders who Marrell hopes to pair with Jane.

The game consists of Jane trying to guess the details of a story the rest of the group has supposedly invented while she was out of the room. As Jane begins guessing however her own story is revealed, ultimately leading to a whole slew of "angsts": Jane and Tom must deal with their infidelity; Marrell and Tom deal with parenthood and marriage; Alan must deal with his questions about his life's accomplishments; Jane must finally deal with her husband's death; and they all must deal with their friendships.

Each of the actors here handles both the comedic and dramatic aspects of the show very well. Chepovetsky as the wise-cracking gay friend was definitely a highlight, but even the wittiest (or is that cattiest?) of the gay men I have known over the years could not sustain at the level playwright Melissa James Gibson provides in Alan.

Follows brings much honesty to her character and both Holness and Thomson are not only believable as the couple dealing with the responsibilities of being new parents, all the while, simmering just beneath the surface, is the possibility that their marriage is perhaps void of any real connection. I was at first off-put by Grover's Jean-Pierre but once I got over my own cultural bias I found myself wishing he had a bigger role in holding up a mirror to some of the pettiness of the group.

Set designer Alison Green does a nice job with the Marrell and Tom's small apartment where most of the action takes place, but with other scenes taking place on a second level above the main set piece, it almost felt as if it were an afterthought.

But while indeed entertaining and funny in the moment with a great cast, I found the whole exercise mostly forgettable. I spent little time wondering what happens next, especially since the playwright doesn't wrap everything up in a neat little bow for us.

Perhaps I found this particularly perplexing and frustrating as someone dealing with his own middle aged angst (notice I didn't say crisis).

Source: Gay Vancouver

Plank Magazine - January 17, 2011

"This: welcome home"
Andrew Templeton

With his writing, Ernest Hemingway wanted to create the sense that the lives of his characters continued on before and after the narratives he created; to achieve a sense of looking at a snapshot in the lives of real people rather than providing characters whose actions conformed to demands of plot or theme. With This, currently on at the Vancouver Playhouse, Melissa James Gibson, evokes a similar created reality: it is as if we are dropped into the world of her characters – in this case, educated, mid-lifers, living in New York – and then suddenly pulled out as their messy, inter-connected lives carry on without us. Not all the narratives are wrapped up neatly, not every character has a clearly articulated journey and a nifty exit line – instead for some the action simply stops (which is just fine by me).

The question becomes why Gibson chose these particular points of entrance and departure for her characters and to deduce from the evidence provided whose narrative is at the core. Again like Hemingway, Gibson is elusive. I've known people to dismiss The Sun Also Rises as some pointless – albeit well written – story about bullfighting. Bullfighting is not the point of Hemingway's book, and likewise Gibson's thematic interests are not necessarily where they appear to be at first glance. What seems to be a play about infidelity and the impact of children on older parents turns into an exploration of grief and identity.

Intriguingly, Gibson is pulling off these sly tricks while operating in an all too familiar milieu – the urban, domestic drama – and working with language that is accessible and with an ear for dialogue that is laugh out loud funny. Indeed, it is quite possible to go to This, laugh your arse off and not give the show another thought. In this way, Gibson's writing put me in mind of a contemporary Oscar Wilde, particularly during the dazzling opening sequence – which includes a hilarious word game that goes horrifically off the rails. Like Wilde, James never shies away from going for the laugh, even when those laughs seem to be awkwardly placed within a dramatic context. Talking to a few people after the show, this seemed to be a consistent question raised. I'm not sure how I feel about it all. In my own writing, I will almost always go for the laugh no matter what the situation – and I have come under intense scrutiny because of it. I understand why directors might balk at these moments, they are tricky for the actors and if they misfire they can take the audience out of the work and also undermine the "seriousness" of the piece.

So, this is a work that presents subtle challenges. The production itself is beautifully and honestly executed. Director Amiel Gladstone keeps the pacing fresh and focused on performances and text. Unfortunately Alison Green's cumbersome and slightly awkward set does get in the way but the cast for their part deftly avoid any of the traps Gibson may have set for them. I know some of you will want to hear about Megan Follows and I have a confession to make: I've never seen Anne of Green Gables. So a whole dimension was missing from my experience of the evening, which I guess is a Canadian equivalent of seeing Chandler from Friends doing Mamet on Broadway. The Playhouse has put a lot of focus on Follows in its publicity strategy – and this is understandable – although if you're expecting a one woman show with four actors baring witness, you'd be in for a surprise, this is truly an ensemble piece. While the character that Follows plays, Jane, is ultimately the emotional core of the work, her role in the narrative architecture is often blocked from view by the other characters. This is appropriate, this is how life is lived after all, but also because her character is grieving the loss of a husband and like grieving people they are at once highly visible (and turned into a sort of symbol by others, as Jane is here) and invisible, we don't want to see too much of the grief, after all, it makes us uncomfortable.

Playing a character who is at once visible/invisible, coping/not coping, Follows gives a grounded and nuanced performance. Todd Thomson and Karen Holness are completely believable as a couple who are struggling with a new born who refuses to sleep longer than 15 minutes as well as confronting the mismatches in their relationship. Fabrice Gover gets lots of laughs in nailing the haughty Frenchman, Jean-Pierre. The sneering European is not particularly original in American popular culture. Neither is the gay BFF who is always ready with an irreverent wisecrack and seems to be lacking in any sort of sex life (perhaps this is the level gay men can be accepted at into mainstream culture: we'll have you around because you're funny but don't have any sex). I forgive Gibson this slip into stereotype simply because Alan is so damn funny and he does have other quirks that make him unique. But it is Dmitry Chepovetsky who really brings the character to life with an outstanding performance and great comedic timing.

Although I'm impressed by Gibson's writing, there are moments where the script flags and the juggling act between heightened, elliptical language and uber-naturalism falter. I could also have done without the song interludes – the play includes original music composed by Peter Eldridge – although it was nice to hear Holness singing. For my money, there is one place where the piece seriously falters and intriguingly highlights what it is that Gibson does so well. In the penultimate scene, Jane has a meltdown in front of her friends that involves the ashes of her dead husband. The scene feels somehow unearned or maybe too extreme. This is tricky because we can all think of situations where someone (maybe even ourselves) has had a public meltdown that seems to come out of the blue. Jane has confessed to the others that the perfect relationship she shared with her husband might not have been all that perfect and, in fact, that her grief had been complicated – perhaps even compromised – by the fact that they were going through a bad patch. This is quite a challenging notion about how we manage our own internal narrative and how we respond to the concepts that others – in this case, the grieving widow from the ideal marriage – place on us. Instead of grieving – as we understand grief – Jane has simply been absent. I guess I found the sequence with the ashes to be out of keeping with not just the world Gibson has created but also with how she's been marshalling her material. She'd kept her nerve for so long, not letting anything slip, not giving into easy cathartic moments that it was as if her courage faltered at this crucial moment and we find ourselves stumbling into more familiar territory.

As has been reported widely, Gibson was raised in Vancouver and this production is a homecoming of sorts for her. For the past decade, she has been building an impressive resume in New York – where she now lives – and this represents the peak of her career so far. The Playhouse production is a great opportunity to welcome Gibson home.

Source: Plank Magazine