Social Studies is family drama with a refugee

N.B. BLR gives readers a Quicky version that features three sections of six or so paragraphs that sum up my take on the show : From the footlights, Acting pin-spots & Who gonna like. Enthusiasts with time who want more back-story & dialogue quotations & production details as well as ticket specifics can read the entire review in the Wordy version that follows.

Quicky Version

From the footlights : Promo materials from Firehall Arts Centre describe the play thus : "This heart-warming comedy by Trish Cooper about a South Sudanese 'Lost Boy' adopted by the well-intentioned Wilson family of Winnipeg, yields hilarious result when it takes on Canadian values and differences. With characters so full of contradictions we are reminded of ourselves. Social Studies highlights family connections and the desire to do good in the world." I fully expected a comedy modeled along the lines of CBC's Little Mosque on the Prairies sit-com. It is, decidedly, not. At maybe only one point did I find a scene "hilarious". But that is not necessarily criticism.

Cooper, 40-something, is a Winnipeg comic actress and playwright. She got the nub of her script idea not from the CBC show but from personal experience she and her mom had with a refugee Sudanese foster brother named Thon. The plot of her play involves a peacenik-y United Church lay minister mom who often presides at gay marriages. She adopts a Lost Boy named Deng at the very moment elder daughter Jackie boomerangs back home when her 7-year marriage implodes. The show's title comes from Grade 10 younger daughter Sarah who decides to do her socials project on Deng's experiences in order to generate better understanding of the tortuous conditions in his homeland. 

Director Donna Spencer has corraled a very talented cast of women to skate on such ice. A winter's tale of deep-seated cultural clashes in 2006 Winnipeg could be tricky indeed to pull off. I am pleased to report that Firehall's production enlightens audiences in both senses of the word, and does so with zing and panache.

Acting pin-spots :  It is the dynamic interaction between McFarlen, Moon and Beaudoin that carries the play. Cooper's script is embraced compellingly by Director Donna Spencer. Her blocking of these women and the hand and facial stage business she has them act out to punctuate their personalities is first-rate. The physical closeness between them as they interact is sheer spot-on family stuff. Both McFarlen and Moon quite caught my attention in their respective roles in Miss Shakespeare, and they didn't disappoint for a nano-second last night. And maybe it's because she reminds me so much of one of my teen-age granddaughters, but Lili Beaudoin (who originally smote me in Sister Judy) did it all over again in this piece. She is a truly sharp and clever character actor with a huge future. 

Deng's character being reprised by Diggs from his 2013 debut at the Prairie Theatre Exchange is depicted as a genuinely shy fellow who wants really only two things from his new Canadian life : joy & happiness. The joy emerges from his gentle spirit. His quest for happiness leads him down many of the same bad choice,  debt-entrapping paths most Canadians tread in pursuing material comforts and public show : "I wish to be as good as you want me to be!" he cries pathetically to his Wilson family at play's end.

Who gonna like : From all the pre-reading I did in prep for the show, I confess to being surprised at how it struck me, ultimately. While playwright Cooper might have thought she was mounting a comedy ("hilarious") about the foibles of uptight white Canadians, what she accomplished most successfully was a script about three women in a family coming of age together. The immigrant / refugee factor emblemized by the character Deng was a muted characteristic, I felt -- he was made out mostly to be a foil for the women in this family whose gustily voiced dialogue was priceless to behold.  Previously in the week I mentioned Antony Holland in Family Matters at the Cultch three or so decades ago. If family matters are matters that matter to you, you will find much to relate to in this performance. The refugee conversation under way across the land only heightens the play's relevance.

Wordy Version

From the footlights : Promo materials from Firehall Arts Centre describe the play thus : "This heart-warming comedy by Trish Cooper about a South Sudanese 'Lost Boy' adopted by the well-intentioned Wilson family of Winnipeg, yields hilarious result when it takes on Canadian values and differences. With characters so full of contradictions we are reminded of ourselves. Social Studies highlights family connections and the desire to do good in the world." I fully expected a comedy modeled along the lines of CBC's Little Mosque on the Prairies sit-com. It is, decidedly, not. At maybe only one point did I find a scene "hilarious". But that is not necessarily criticism.

Cooper, 40-something, is a Winnipeg comic actress and playwright. She got the nub of her script idea not from the CBC show but from personal experience she and her mom had with a refugee Sudanese foster brother named Thon. The plot of her play involves a peacenik-y United Church lay minister mom who often presides at gay marriages. She adopts a Lost Boy named Deng at the very moment elder daughter Jackie boomerangs back home when her 7-year marriage implodes. The show's title comes from Grade 10 younger daughter Sarah who decides to do her socials project on Deng's experiences in order to generate better understanding of the tortuous conditions in his homeland. 

Director Donna Spencer has corraled a very talented cast of women to skate on such ice. A winter's tale of deep-seated cultural clashes in 2006 Winnipeg could be tricky indeed to pull off. I am pleased to report that Firehall's production enlightens audiences in both senses of the word, and does so with zing and panache.

WYSIWYG : The dramatic power of the play comes from the dialogue written for the three Wilson women : Mom Val (Susinn McFarlen), Jackie (Erin Moon), and Sarah (Lili Beaudoin). Their age spread across four or more decades sets the stage for some punchy exchanges as they try to sort out the what, the why, and the how to create an ersatz family for a 22-year-old Lost Boy (Richie Diggs) who hails from a decidedly chauvinistic, machocentric culture of constant fight-or-flight impulses, truly a "kill or be killed" world. (Estimates are that the 23-year civil war resulted in 2 million deaths and 20,000 refugee children of both sexes.)

A month earlier, Val unilaterally offered up daughter Jackie's vacant bedroom to Deng who was bunking down with five other Lost Boys in an apartment. When Jackie asks Sarah why she did it, young Sarah explains Deng's plight with empathic Grade 10 nonchalance and insight : "They're not getting tortured anymore but they're alone and broke and shit." For her part, Jackie is explosively angry at soon-to-be ex-husband Mark, and camping on the chesterfield while Deng sleeps on her flowery duvet amuses her very little. When Deng observes that the movie she's watching is a gay male love story, he squirms and protests how wrong that conduct is in his home culture.

Sarah interviews Deng for her socials project. She finds him attractive. But when he reveals he has an "ugly" girl hiding in the basement -- meaning she's not his true girlfriend -- Sarah explodes : "I never thought of you as being a dick, but you are being so dick-ish right now!" When he rebuffs her later bid to sneak a kiss from him after a beer, the dramatic tension in the Wilson house mounts inexorably for the balance of the play.

Matriarch Val watches and rants as her daughters play out their respective hissy-fits. When Jackie says she's depressed, Val shoots back : "Oh, please, depression is a first world invention not to be confused with self-pity!" Jackie harbours not only grudges but fears. Claiming Sudanese culture is misogynist, she prattles to Sarah one night : "He could just erupt in anger and start choking us! Don't you think it's insane to have a stabby timebomb living in our home?"

Against Val's regular reminder of first-world privilege that is at the centre of Canadian culture, Jackie protests and fights back saying "I am not being an asshole by asking some relevant questions" about whether Lost Boys can truly assimilate into mainstream Canadian life. Perhaps her best and most telling line is when she invites Mom to watch The Milagro Beanfield War with her : "There is so much injustice and poverty in this movie, you will love it!" 

That line captures wonderfully the fact that for most Canadians, self-included, their experience with 3rd world folk is limited to what the media present in their inherently subjective ways. Or what we absorb collaterally from the safety of the t.v. screen. Then there's the "chattering classes factor" to add into the mix. Folks in coffee shops and pubs and around the dinner table voicing their fears, usually over personal safety concerns. Pundits love to call this either racism or xenophobia or both, but it probably isn't i.m.o. It's just real base-line emotions playing themselves out. 

Complicated, all of this, by the fact that often refugees, like the Sudanese, are ghettoized in the cities they migrate too, partly by choice, mostly by economic & cultural diktat. As seen in Belgium and France of late, this tendency can potentially lead to horrific consequences. Canadians are neither wrong nor exempt from such concerns. But true-to-form, our better selves will and do win out in the end. Both in Cooper's play and in our real-time address of the horror that (today) is Syria.

In Cooper's characterization, Deng carries a Bible and goes to church regularly. He's a bit of a Puritan. Sarah challenges him "Oh you're upset that Canadian girls drink and swear, talk back and have their own money?" Without confessing it straight up, he clearly doesn't disagree with Sarah's cut at the cultural divide between them. (N.B. South Sudan immigrants to Canada are roughly 50% Muslim, 50% Christian.)

Acting pin-spots :  It is the dynamic interaction between McFarlen, Moon and Beaudoin that carries the play. Cooper's script is embraced compellingly by Director Donna Spencer. Her blocking of these women and the hand and facial stage business she has them act out to punctuate their personalities is first-rate. The physical closeness between them as they interact is sheer spot-on family stuff. Both McFarlen and Moon quite caught my attention in their respective roles in Miss Shakespeare, and they didn't disappoint for a nano-second last night. And maybe it's because she reminds me so much of one of my teen-age granddaughters, but Lili Beaudoin (who originally smote me in Sister Judy) did it all over again in this piece. She is a truly sharp and clever character actor with a huge future. 

Deng's character being reprised by Diggs from his 2013 debut at the Prairie Theatre Exchange is depicted as a genuinely shy fellow who wants really only two things from his new Canadian life : joy & happiness. The joy emerges from his gentle spirit. His quest for happiness leads him down many of the same bad choice,  debt-entrapping paths most Canadians tread in pursuing material comforts and public show : "I wish to be as good as you want me to be!" he cries pathetically to his Wilson family at play's end.

Production values of particular note :  She may have retired from UBC, but Alison Green hasn't slept in or lost one iota of excellence. The angled and articulated house interior with its early antique kitchen round table (nice symbolism for family connectivity), even the stained glass leaded window in the front door -- all of it just perfect for the FAC intimate stage. Matt Frankish's lighting designs worked well indeed given all the fade-ins and black-outs the scriptwork calls for scene-after-scene. The continuous rheostat'd table lamps circling the set were just right.

Who gonna like : From all the pre-reading I did in prep for the show, I confess to being surprised at how it struck me, ultimately. While playwright Cooper might have thought she was mounting a comedy ("hilarious") about the foibles of uptight white Canadians, what she accomplished most successfully was a script about three women in a family coming of age together. The immigrant / refugee factor emblemized by the character Deng was a muted characteristic, I felt -- he was made out mostly to be a foil for the women in this family whose gustily voiced dialogue was priceless to behold.  Previously in the week I mentioned Antony Holland in Family Matters at the Cultch three or so decades ago. If family matters are matters that matter to you, you will find much to relate to in this performance. The refugee conversation under way across the land only heightens the play's relevance.

Particulars :  Written by Trish Cooper. At the Firehall Arts Centre, southwest corner of Cardero at Gore in DTES. Run-time 160 minutes including intermission. On through December 5th. Information and tickets via FirehallArtsCentre.ca or by phoning 604.689.0926.

Production team :  Director Donna Spencer.  Set Designer Alison Green.  Costume Designer Sabrina Evertt.  Lighting Designer Matt Frankish.  Props Yasu Shimosaka.  Stage Manager Emma Hammond.  Technical Director Jamie Burns.  Production Assistant Teresa Nelson. 

Performers :  Lili Beaudoin (Sarah).  Richie Diggs (Deng).  Susinn McFarlen (Val).  Erin Moon (Jackie).

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