Putting a face on addiction
Problem Child uses humour to humanize stereotypes
Problem Child follows the trials and tribulations of R.J. and Denise, two dysfunctional parents who are trying to get their baby back from a foster family. The play deals with issues of class, money and government bureaucracy, while putting a human face on addiction.
Lindsay Curl says she was attracted to the play for its humanity.
“I just think the characters are hilarious,” said the actor.
“They’re huge characters. And it humanizes stereotypes, like the prostitute who’s a drug addict and wants her baby back. And the play is also just funny. As dark as it is, (playwright) George F. Walker is brilliant, and he’s managed to make this very serious subject matter quite hilarious.”
The 1997 play is the first in the prolific Canadian playwright’s Suburban Motel series of six plays. Curl, who starred in Pacific Theatre’s April production of Joan MacLeod’s one-woman play, The Shape of a Girl, is producing the work as part of her apprenticeship with Stone’s Throw Productions. She asked Studio 58 grad Alex Kirkpatrick to direct.
“One of the things Pacific Theatre taught me was to work with good people, and people you like,” Curl said. “The moment I met Alex, we really clicked.”
Kirkpatrick said, “The most important thing about working in theatre is how we communicate with each other because that’s the primary process of our job — communicating the meaning of the script, about how the production goes, who we want to run and pull ideas from rehearsals and pull together a team that communicates effectively.”
The director has also worked at the National Arts Centre, Great Canadian Theatre Company and Gateway Theatre. He’s a fan of Walker’s work, which, like Curl, he’s been exposed to in theatre school. While Kirkpatrick was attending Studio 58, the playwright wrote an original work for the school, The Crowd.
“I got to watch Patrick McDonald of Green Thumb, who was a good friend of his and a frequent collaborator, work with that style of text and be surrounded by people who were immersed in working with the way George F. Walker writes,” he said.
Walker’s scenes often lean toward comedy, so Kirkpatrick and the cast, which includes Tim Howe, Jalen Saip and Conor Stinson O’Gorman, have worked toward finding a balance between the humour and seriousness of the subject matter.
The challenge for her, Curl says, has been to keep a straight face during rehearsals.
“The lines are just funny, and it was hard not to break these emotional scenes and just laugh. But we got over that hump. It’s just really connecting to the maternal heart of having your child taken away from you.”
Denise, Curl’s character, hasn’t seen her child in six months. “I don’t have a child of my own but I do have a three-year-old niece I’m close to. That’s what I’m using to root Denise’s pain of missing that child, of having that child taken away.”