Review
AFTERLIFE
Lunchbox Theatre
Starring Heather Lea MacCallum, Suzanne McDowell and Emily Talia
Written by Clem Martini
Directed by Johanne Deleeuw
Runs until February 26
Bow Valley Square
Afterlife is Lunchbox Theatre’s 250th production and playwright Clem Martini’s 11th première on its noontime stage – a set of milestones for the durable Calgary company. It’s just a shame that this is the show chosen to mark them.
Haunting the bare beams of her ex-lover’s former attic, Barbara Hood (Heather Lea MacCallum) is surprised by the arrival of her recently deceased daughter, Crystal (Suzanne McDowell), who is bearing the emotional baggage of a lifetime spent feeling inadequate and unloved by her emotionally unavailable mother. Moaning with melancholy and rattling a glass full of pencils that grate as quickly on the audience’s ears as they do on Barbara’s, Crystal seems set for an eternity of vengeance until her own tormenter arrives.
Intending to haunt Crystal, the instigator of her recent untimely demise, Lynalene Castaleno’s (Emily Talia) appearance provides the play’s main comic relief. As a ghost coming to terms with her new existence, Talia’s Lynalene has the exasperated charm of a fish out of water. She experiments with drinking cleaner and at one point accidentally emerges from a washing machine because, for a disembodied spirit, "entrances and exits are hard at first."
While there is a tenuous connection between Lynalene’s history of foster care and the Hoods’ emotional separation, the bumbling spectre seems to be introduced solely to provide the play’s few enthusiastic laughs, such as an extended electrocution sequence that upstages Barbara and Crystal’s critical emotional confrontation. Lynalene’s character is a welcome, if incongruous, addition to the play that is ultimately far more compelling than Barbara and Crystal’s relationship.
While the play’s focus is ostensibly on the reconciliation between Barbara and Crystal, that part of the story quickly wanes in favour of exploiting the afterlife conceit and providing pithy dialogue that is meant to be witty but lacks energy. When the once-alcoholic Barbara reveals that her transformation into a ghost left her unable to imbibe, she calls death a simple "one-step program," and chides Lynalene for unintentionally performing a "drive-by haunting."
The play’s ending sees Barbara and Crystal’s lifelong conflict finally resolved in the afterlife with what ultimately amounts to a great deal of shouting as Lynalene looks on with frustration. But the impact of the reconciliation has already been stolen by Lynalene’s comic presence and weakened with jokes springing from a premise that wears thin soon after Crystal’s plaintive cries to "remember me."
While an hour is certainly a short time to sort out a lifetime of pain, Afterlife proves that a pair of unsympathetic characters and cursory solutions to deep problems can make it seem like an eternity. |
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