Talking about things we do not talk about
Sharon King-campbell’s book ‘Dayboil’ is a play with good dialogue and intrigue
Dayboil: A Play
By Sharon King-campbell Breakwater Books
$18.95, 96 pages
“Dayboil” is a play about talking about the things we do not talk about – often by talking about anything or everything else.
As indicated by the title, this is a compact juxtaposition of everydayness with the urgent warning that something is about to blow.
This is a three-act piece with a single setting: Kathy and Kevin’s kitchen in a small Newfoundland and Labrador town, accessed directly from a side door.
THE CHARACTERS
Kathy is a paramedic in her late 30s and Kevin, her husband, works as a technician with a cable company. They don’t have children.
The other characters are Patricia, Kathy’s older sister, a homemaker married to Pete and mother of two sons; Patricia’s best friend, Christine, who works at the local café and is married with a son in the armed forces and serving overseas; Jennifer, just 17, raised in Toronto but whose mother grew up locally and is visiting and also employed in the café (and her mom, Madeline Hollett, is a contemporary of Patricia and Christine’s, and for whatever reason they do not remember her fondly); and Eunice, an older woman who was Kathy and Patricia’s neighbour when they were kids and has a motherly relationship to them (her own married daughter, Amanda, has moved to Alberta for work).
MEETING THE WOMEN
The women are gathering for their regular get-together, chitchat, coffee, tea, and treats – the men, it seems, have commandeered the café for their own hobnobs. (This establishment, which we never see, takes on a presence of its own.)
Kathy enters off the top, rushed and ill-prepared for her turn as hostess. She wrangles coffee and muffins, simultaneously divesting herself of her winter coat and boots, arranging the store-bought muffins in a tin and placing them in the oven, a well-worn trick to masquerade storebought goods as something homemade.
Patricia enters next; the sisters don’t exchange a word. Then Eunice comes in, shortly followed by Christine, and the conversation begins, of course, with the weather, establishing that it is early winter.
TENSIONS
From the earliest exchanges, it’s apparent there are tensions on the go. There’s the disconnect between Kathy and Patricia.
Christine can’t sleep, with her son on his tour of duty. She fuels her working day with cup after cup of coffee, but won’t seek medical advice. Her husband is not so afflicted, one of the many differences between the women and the men that these characters continuously allude to and “joke” about.
It's also quickly evident that something is awry in Kathy’s marriage. Any reference to Kevin is steeped in bitterness – his late hours, his inability to put away laundry (none of the husbands or sons seem capable of lifting a hand in the house), the stress he brings home from work (this is a new job) when in contrast by definition of her occupation she deals with 12-hour shifts of crisis after crisis.
THE GUNSHOT
Then there’s a frantic knock on the door. Kathy opens it and Jennifer enters in a panic. She was walking home from the café and heard a gunshot. She ran home but found herself accidentally locked out of the house.
At the same time, Kathy’s phone rings and Patricia answers; from her side of the conversation, it seems someone is calling with the same information, adding that the police have been called, and she learns from which house the sound was heard.
Kathy goes to investigate, Eunice with her.
Jennifer – whom Christine keeps calling Jenny, despite her corrections and to her annoyance – sits at the table as the other women begin to fuss about making sandwiches. And then someone calls from the café with awful news.
GOOD DIALOGUE
The dialogue is a good, streamlined mixture of cliché – which can convey so much with its placement and intention – and direct verbal thrusts by one who knows her target’s vulnerabilities intimately.
The cast circle and feint around truths: what happened to Kathy and Patricia’s younger brother, Ian? What was Kevin hiding throughout the house, and maybe even worse, out in the shed? How on earth is it possible that a grown man in this day and age cannot make himself a lunch?
The dialogue is nicely calibrated, interspersed with telling beats, and realistically occasionally overlapping.
All the gestures are telling: who wipes down the counter, and how efficiently, and why; who does or doesn’t top up someone’s coffee; even how someone takes the lid off a pot of chili.
As a text, it reads cleanly and clearly, with lots of space to envision persona, blockings, interactions, and reactions.
There are also moments of real, “earned,” humour and connection. And there is resolution, but enfolded within this is the acknowledgement that some human events are difficult to resolve.
This is a threeact piece with a single setting: Kathy and Kevin’s kitchen in a small Newfoundland and Labrador town, accessed directly from a side door.