Teenage life in two distant Scarboroughs
Scarberia
(out of 4) Written by Evan Placey. Directed by Nina Lee Aquino. Until May 1 at Young People’s Theatre, 165 Front St. E. YoungPeoplesTheatre.ca or 416-862-2222.
What does quantum physics have to do with adolescence? According to Scarberia, Evan Placey’s film noiresque theatre for young audiences, the last production offered by Young People’s Theatre for its 50th season, there are many more similarities than it would seem.
Scarberia links two different Scarboroughs with a dead body found on a beach. When Craig (Shelly Antony) and Simon (Mishka Thebaud) skip school to hang out at “their spot” along the shore in Scarborough, England, they find the body of a teenage girl named Marisha (Alejandra Simmons), whom they discover is from Scarborough, Ont.
Closer to home, Craven and Simian are part of the gang responsible for making Marisha disappear.
Placey, a Scarborough-born and London-based playwright (whose partner’s hometown is the U.K.’s twin Scarborough and gave him the inspiration to write the play), is known for plays that avoid condescending to or simplifying the teenage experience.
These are characters that don’t sugar-coat the darker sides of their lives. Poverty, death and social pressures of school are all at play here with no sense of adult figures to interfere positively or negatively. Placey’s world or worlds are grounded in reality, but Craig and Simon’s decision to investigate Marisha’s death sends the story into some magical places.
To explain the confusion about finding Marisha in the wrong Scar- borough, Simon clings to the idea in quantum physics that infinite realities exist at the same time, creating many Simons, Craigs and Marishas who are living better lives in better places.
He becomes convinced Marisha died trying to leap from one reality into another.
Simon, grieving his mother and without the guidance of his older brother, doesn’t have the social clout of his childhood friend Craig (nor the girlfriend), who wants to try the jump, too.
In Ontario, Craven and Simian see escape from their problems in a much more literal way — build a family within their gang or buy a plane ticket and get out.
Either way, Scarberia is written squarely within the tension of adolescence that’s filled with anxiety around the future and an intense desire to get there immediately.
They may not fully grasp inter-dimension transference, but Craig, Simon, Craven and Simian are four guys who are caught in the in-between space of adolescence.
Craig and Simon skip school to play games in the arcade but do unmentionable things to the stuffed animals they win. Simian grapples with the politics of gang identity and loyalty but does so by using fast-food chains as a surprisingly astute analogy — if you remember the McDonald’s pizza fiasco, you’ll get it.
Marisha, on the other hand, has rhyming monologues that explain her side of the story, which Simmons delivers with the rhythm of spokenword poetry. Her presence is ethereal and she speaks with an otherworldly wisdom compared to her male peers — she’s well aware of her place as a girl in Scarborough’s gang culture, as well as her pecking order in school, and articulates her reality with beautiful prose.
Placey’s script doesn’t show quite the same control in the finale, where the circumstances around Marisha’s death are revealed, and Antony and Thebaud rapidly switch between the Scarboroughs.
Nina Lee Aquino’s direction keeps the division very clear up until this point with intricate costume and ac- cent work, but there might be a few heads left scratching anyway.
But on the other hand, adolescence is a messy business — it’s amazing how anyone makes it out alive.