How a 320-year-old play inspired a work about millennials
Playwright Erin Shields goes beyond the surface in new show The Millennial Malcontent
Millennials: Who are these much-talked about creatures and what makes them tick?
The nuts-and-bolts definition of this generation — someone born between the early 1980s and the year 2000 — is generally accepted.
But whether millennials are an enlightened, savvy populace ready to shoulder the enormous challenges the world’s handed to them or a bunch of self-regarding moaners is the stuff of considerable debate.
And, at the moment in Toronto, the stuff of innovative theatre.
Following from Five Faces for Evelyn Frost/Cinq visages pour Évelyne Frost at Canadian Stage and Théâtre français de Toronto — a dark, nonnaturalistic drama in which five characters enact their social media personas — we have The Millennial Malcontent, a world premiere comedy by Governor General’s Awardwinning playwright Erin Shields, opening Wednesday night at Tarragon Theatre.
The play presents eight millennial characters who, on one level, embody stereotypes: Charm (Frank Cox-O’Connell) is a YouTube star, Johnny (Reza Sholeh) has “a prestigious unpaid internship at an impressive NGO,” and Raz (Alicia Richardson) is a lesbian computer programmer with a near-abusive sense of ironic humour.
Shields’ project, however, is to get beneath the characters’ surface sheen and for this she’s taken cues from her source material.
It came from Sir John Vanbrugh’s 1697 play The Provoked Wife, which has stuck with actor-turned-writer Shields since she performed in it in a drama school production.
“Part of the way Restoration comedies work is that they have this sort of bubbly, sparkly stuff on the top. Everyone’s concerned with the presentation and performance of the self,” she explains. “But what I love about the play is that there’s this deeper, uglier comedy going on.”
In working on this adaptation, Shields — who was born in 1977, at the tail end of generation X — identified a parallel between Vanbrugh’s characters and the millennial generation, in particular their self-presentation online. “What do you post, when do you post, how do you post? There’s a whole codification: ‘filters,’ ‘hashtag no filter,’ a whole language around how you present yourself. So that’s the parallel: a crackly part on the top but a profound loneliness that comes from that.” Performer Natasha Mumba, who is in her 20s, says the material hits home: “My character, Teasel, is a PhD student who lives in theory and is terrified to step into the real world. This is a theme I see with a lot of my friends. They stay in school forever, using their education as a safety net to not enter into the real world.”
Shields’ innovations also include flipping the gender of some of Vanbrugh’s characters: whereas in the original, for example, the virtuous Lady Brute is caught in an unhappy marriage with Sir John, here it’s Moxy, played by Liz Peterson, who’s the bored spouse with a roving eye.
“While Erin’s for sure making a comment about millennial culture, she’s doing something larger,” says Cox-O’Connell, “which is to look at the things that were said about women a couple of hundred years ago; now we’re saying the exact same things about men today.”
“In the last scene, the three of us (male performers) are standing onstage silent for a long time while the women argue about their problems that are not all just directly related to the men’s problems,” notes 20-something James Daly, who plays nice-guy music reviewer Heartfree.
“They hash s--- out and talk about us like we’re their accessories. That’s something that women have had to go through for a long time in theatre and in life.”
Director Peter Hinton identifies himself as “on the edge of baby boomer,” having been born in the early ’60s. He says it’s been “interesting to explore what is unique about people born at this time: what real challenges are facing a young person today.” And he’s come away inspired: “What I personally reject is that millennials are entitled, privileged whiners . . . I find the younger generation way more politicized and aware than I was at their age. I’m generalizing, but I’m hopeful about this generation. They seem much further ahead.”
Playing to a preview crowd dominated by university students generated a response that Daly likens to a “rock show,” but Cox-O’Connell says the material is also resonating, perhaps more quietly, with Tarragon’s older subscription base: “It’s testament to Erin’s writing that it holds up in a room filled with both. For me the play does so much more than just say ‘kids today.’” The Millennial Malcontent plays at Tarragon through April 9. See tarragontheatre.com or phone 416-531-1827. Karen Fricker is a Toronto Star theatre critic. She alternates the Wednesday Matinée column with critic Carly Maga.