People’s Light presents Lucy Kirkwood’s ‘The Children’

Janis Dardaris (Rose), Marcia Saunders (Hazel), and Graham Smith (Robin) are longtime colleagues and friends, and it showed. Their performances featured a level of nuance, vulnerability, and risk taking that is only possible among people with a long history of shared experiences.

As Rose, Dardaris had the widest emotional range, from wacky comedy to clinical dispassion. Smith’s character, the only male in the play, was portrayed as a sentimentalist yet given freedom to express outrage in a way that is the exclusive province of white men. Saunders, as Hazel, seemed at first to be subservient, subsuming her needs and desires into the creation of a peaceful home—but her role in the story becomes more central than it first seems.

Why they're together

In the Steinbright Stage lobby, there’s an exemplary display created by dramaturg Gina Pisasale. Laying out relevant information regarding nuclear power plant accidents, the board was edifying yet not simplistic; informational but not overwhelming. However, this clarity and veracity led to a double disappointment onstage, when the scientific chain of events undergirding this drama about a devastating power-plant incident is questionable at best.

But don’t let the idea that this is a play about climate change deter you from seeing it. It is about climate change in the same way that family dramas set during Thanksgiving dinner are about Thanksgiving. The Children follows the negotiation of long-held, complex, internecine emotional bonds. These are three people who not only worked together in high-pressure situations, but who have known each other for more than 40 years.

Success in simplicity

It is fortunate that the performances are at a uniformly high level, because otherwise the piece is rather spare. The playwright’s choice to focus on the text is brought to life by Abigail Adams’s clean, crisp, understated direction, which elevates Kirkwood’s voice, a new and exciting addition to the theatrical landscape. All too often, plays about social issues tend to hit us over the head with their importance, yet The Children gives a human scale to the aftermath of a climate disaster, using wry comedy, drama, and a great affection for its characters to make its points. The piece avoids the usual protagonist/antagonist binary, instead painting a picture of three flawed yet essentially good human beings whose desires exceed their grasps.

Rooting the play’s complexity in the text allows for some lovely grace notes in other areas. For example, while the play is presented on a proscenium stage, the front of the proscenium is angled at approximately 30 degrees going left to right. Not only does this heighten the tension of the piece by reducing the downstage playing area; it brings up images of fault lines, continually reminding us of how this all began. Dennis Parichy’s lighting slowly dims over the 100 minutes of the performance, again bringing in the rhythms of the outside world. Daniel Zimmerman’s set is a realistic combination kitchen/living room. Although the bathroom and bedroom are indicated and even used by the characters, they are never shown, reminding me how tragedy can circumscribe one’s physical existence.

In a culture that is becoming ever more digitized and technological, we often dismiss realistic, character-based, single-set plays as irrelevant to our current conditions. The Children reminds us of this form’s possibilities, and the heights of artistry simplicity can achieve. I urge you to go and see what old friends can do with the work of a new, vibrant theatrical voice.