Moving family portrait of loss, recovery asks whether faith is enough
It is hard to imagine a family that hasn’t, in some way, been touched by alcoholism. Sometimes it’s just a brush, a quiet aunt, a tooboisterous cousin. Sometimes it’s right below your bedroom, late at night, in the living room where your parents are fighting.
The audience, therefore, for Collin Doyle’s new black comedy, Terry and the Dog, is vast. And if this makes you feel squeamish, like turning away, resist. Because while Terry and the Dog is a tough play to watch, it has that ineffable something that theatregoers crave. The story, though specific, is universal.
Quietly directed by Dave Horak of Edmonton Actors Theatre, Terry and the Dog is an intimate experience. You know that because Terry is sitting in a lawn chair on his backyard deck, a sixpack of Labatt’s on the ground beside him, even as the audience trickles into the theatre.
Hard to know how long he’s been there. It becomes clear that Terry doesn’t really have any place else to go. Mostly what he does is hang out with his dog, Buddy, although even that relationship has been strained.
Terry, you see, has a habit of killing Buddy, by accident of course. Funny thing is, Buddy comes back. From the dead. More than once. The death ( by freezing, being run over) always seems to come just as Terry is about to leap, once again, off the wagon. Because as often as Terry has tried to quit drinking, he starts again. It is a pattern familiar to many; falling down is part of getting up again, or so they say. Hard to believe, that, especially when you’re the alcoholic. Your friends and family may believe it more than you. You just think you’re crap, and there’s no hope.
Horak has set the play in the middle of an alley created in the PCL Studio theatre at the ATB Financial Arts Barns, with the audience lined up along two sides of the theatre.
The set, designed by Victoria Zimski and Guido Tondino, is simple — worn fence boards make up a multi-level deck upon which the three characters, Terry (Robert Benz), his wife, Diane (Maralyn Ryan) and Ken (Cole Humeny) play out their lives.
Terry and the Dog is part of a loose, boozy trilogy by the multiaward winning local playwright, who once himself struggled with alcoholism and watched his father (now 25 years sober) go through similar hell.
The Mighty Carlins, about an irascible father and his two sons who gather to commemorate the anniversary of the death of their wife and mother, was produced by Workshop West in 2009. Routes, a 2010 Concrete Theatre production for young people, sees a lonely teenager riding a bus in Mill Woods almost every night, to escape the chaos and violence of his alcoholic home.
Terry and the Dog, for all of its wry jokes, slow pace and the seemingly laid-back demeanour of its lead, is built on a bed of chaos. Terry’s wife left him, his son is estranged. Buddy, devoted to Terry despite his shortcomings, is the anchor of the family. His miraculous rebirth challenges the audience to ponder what’s real in the play, and what is only Terry’s hopeful imagination.
And here is the universal part. If you believe in miracles, dogs rising from the dead, families reunited, love as saviour ... is that enough? Certainly faith, in love, in God, is a sort of daily miracle. Is that how it works? Is that the key? Perhaps. Sometimes.
Performances by Robert Benz and Cole Humeny are very, very good.
Love and suffering unite them, and Horak’s stage configuration means the audience is in tight, tighter than we even want to be. We can hear the ragged sobs, feel the shame. See Terry’s hand as he reaches down, tentatively, to stroke the dog. It’s OK, Buddy, it’s OK. It’s OK.
Terry and the Dog runs until May 19. For tickets, call 780-4201757 or visit tixonthesquare.ca.