By Gary Smith
The Hamilton Spectator
(Feb 22, 2006)

Every so often, a community theatre in the Hamilton area takes a wonderful risk. In choosing to select a tough and gritty, no-nonsense drama, they elevate live theatre beyond the ordinary, allowing audiences to grapple with throat-choking themes.

That's what's happening in Waterdown where Village Theatre is trouncing feeble notions of the tried and true by programming two of Canadian playwright George F. Walker's most excoriating dramas.

Programming is only half the equation. If you can't deliver the goods, then really, what's the use?

Village Theatre not only had the balls to set Walker's dramas in motion, they had the smarts to keep those balls bouncing.

Walker, born in Toronto's gritty east end, is a former cab driver who came to theatre late. His plays don't suggest pretty pictures of life. His characters are frequently on the take, rough around the edges and always disturbing.

Often they're hard to like. Yet somehow they suggest, even in their battered imperfect state, a sort of ragged nobility. They fight the system. They bleed for their effort. And always they seem one step ahead of disaster.

That's certainly true of the tormented folks we meet in Problem Child and Adult Entertainment, the two plays Village Theatre is presenting from Walker's sextet Suburban Motel.

In each of these plays, Walker wields a big stick.

That he smashes it squarely in the face of bureaucracy shouldn't be surprising. For this playmaker, there are no sacred cows.

Those who try to wield a quasi-Christian agenda -- the police, the courts, the social workers -- all such idols with clay feet fall under Walker's heavy boots.

His characters say f--- a lot and slam lots of doors. They're never quiet. They stay in your face no matter how traumatic their conditions.

Adult Entertainment, directed smartly by Roz Woodcock, is a comedy of sex and deceit, force feeding us laughter through pain.

Acted with rough vigour by a delightfully malevolent Jamie Cortese, a handsomely predatory Mel Staley and Rob Woodcock's jerk of a cop, it spews out venom.

Tony Nunes works hard to suggest the cynical, sex-driven edge of sleazy control freak Max. He doesn't always match the strutting peacock Walker intends, but he's only inches off the mark. Problem Child, briskly directed by Peter Feldman, is another tour de force. Mark Besz, a kinetic young actor, is riveting as R.J., a Jerry Springer obsessed ex-con with sad, hollow eyes and a penchant for hollering at reality shows on TV. He massages his battered ego while trying to bolster pretty little Denise, his drug-scarred and stupid wife.

Paula Penton connects perfectly with the erratic rhythms of poor loser Denise. She rants at the world through rose-coloured glasses of what her position in life ought to be. When she can't get her way, she stands stock still and screams.

Kerry Corrigan adds delirious support as Helen, a nagging, holier-than-thou social worker who foists off religious platitudes and keeps a tight rein on Denise and R.J.'s daughter, Christine.

Along for the ride is Ralph Woodcock's alcoholic janitor Philly, a man with the best of intentions and the stupidest of decisions.

Feldman's scruffy set, with its motel-from-hell atmosphere, is perfectly in tune with Walker's sleazy intentions.

Like the playwright's down-and-out characters, here is a metaphor for the roughed up, scuffed up patina of life. A cavil with this engaging Waterdown production is the technical sound quality.

Telephones ring from the opposite side of the stage from where they're located and running water sounds like a deluge from Niagara Falls.

Then there's the matter of guns.

If you're going to have them, they have to look and sound dangerous, not suggest the pop of a cap pistol.

This production is just too good to be marred by such things.

Village Theatre's Suburban Motel is audacious, mind-racing theatre. Drama for people who aren't afraid to laugh and cry at the very same time. It offers real reality, not the stupid stuff that passes for it on TV.

VERY ADULT PROBLEMS

By Robin Pittis
VIEW Magazine
(Feb 23, 2006)

Be warned: George F. Walker is not a playwright who pulls punches... or gunshots. Waterdown Village Theatre’s production of his play Suburban Motel is an evening of desperation, addiction, dysfunction, violent struggle, decomposition and depravity. Believe it or not, in places it’s also belly laugh funny.

Actually what Waterdown has done is produce two short plays by Canada’s most intelligent and hard hitting playwright. Problem Child and Adult Entertainment are from Walker’s collection of five plays set in one motel room at the Suburban Motel. Walker’s work always addresses the dark side of human experience and these plays grab the heart of contemporary malady. They meet at the collision point of individual struggle and the failure of political economic systems. This provides meaty material for drama, to be sure, and ample opportunity for scathing black humour. The tricky thing is to balance the two, and Waterdown isn’t entirely successful.

Problem Child, the first of the two one–act plays, deals with a young couple’s bid to recover their relationship from prison and addiction, and their child from Children’s Aid. Ralph Woodcock and Kerry Panavas (Corrigan - ed.), both Village Theatre vets, relish their roles as alcoholic janitor and judgmental social worker. They deliver a ton of laughs but lean towards stereotype enough to lose some opportunities for real pathos. Mark Besz handles the dark comedy
very well, as always, and connects well with the exasperation and anger of ex–con R.J. but shies away from some of the vulnerability the part requires. The key character of Denise, the recovering addict and frantic mother, is played by Paula Penton. She is still a little self conscious on stage, but moments of the character’s suppressed despair and rage reached the audience.

The second play, Adult Entertainment, also has four characters and almost every one is adulterous, addicted, vicious and cunning. This is a very sexual piece demanding a lot of intimacy, which was challenging for the actors. Mel Staley met that challenge most directly, while Jamie Cortese revelled in the brutally hard hearted wit of Jayne the defense lawyer gone sour. Tony Nunes and Rob Woodcock make corruption and alcoholism almost likable in Max and Donny, a pair of undercover policemen whose lives go from awful to worse in one act.

The directors, Peter Feldman and Roz Woodcock, clearly understand the need to balance humour with hard reality, but err on the side of humour, missing some of the important moments that reveal the essential inner lives of these characters. It is an immensely subtle task, and one that often goes awry in community theatre. Directors and actors can gain a lot by careful script analysis, which can reveal moments where emotional tactics change, and power dynamics shift in a scene. This, in turn, allows for greater variety in pace and vocal range, which is more gripping for an audience. As it was, this evening of theatre was somewhat stretched.

Yet despite this, the audience on Saturday seemed very forgiving and laughed a lot. It’s important that artists and audiences always try challenging material. Waterdown is more affordable and accessible than the Tarragon or Factory Theatres, in the heart of Toronto’s intellectual and creative battleground. This is a hometown theatre tackling the toughest stuff in our national and human consciousness. George F. Walker is holding a mirror up to the grittiest corners of nature. There are dirty cops, junkies, and a tattered and disintegrating social safety net. These problems are real. If you don’t think these people exist, you need to know they do and that they aren’t as different or as far away as you think or wish. You might find you feel that you are one of them, and it is a relief and a release to see them on stage and know you’re not alone.

If Waterdown’s intention was to help us identify with Walker’s outcasts, and raise urgent questions about our society, they succeed. We all face emotional struggles as well as moments of ridiculous absurdity. Hope may come and go, but humour is present even in bitter blackness.

Check in to Village Theatre's Suburban Motel

By MEGAN WALCHUK
FLAMBOROUGH REVIEW
(Feb 23, 2006)
It may not be feel good theatre, but anyone who enjoys dark humour and sharp wit should check in to Village Theatre's latest offering.

Suburban Motel is an award-winning sextet of one-act plays, each set in the same grimy hotel room. It was written by Canadian playwright George F. Walker, who's best known as co-author of the CBC hit series This is Wonderland, as well as his work as creative consultant on Due South and The Newsroom.

Each play follows the trials of a small cast of lovable misfits, as they try in vain to navigate their way out of difficult circumstances. But for all their efforts, they scheme themselves deeper into trouble, as their deals and plans go horribly awry,with sad, but hilariousresults. It's a grimly humorous and voyeuristic look at the alienation and injustice experienced by the lower classes.

Village Theatre chose to show Problem Child and Adult Entertainment for its Suburban Motel selection. Peter Feldman designed the appropriately dreary set, as well as directing Problem Child. The dingy walls and tacky decor are a fitting backdrop to the dismal lives of the characters, while its simplicity lets the
play's high tension, witty dialogue and dark humour take centre stage.

In Problem Child, we meet Denise, an ex-using hooker, and her partner RJ, an ex-con, who are trying to get their baby daughter back from child services, while Adult Entertainment unearths the dirty secrets of two cops done bad, and the women who love them.

The highlights of the evening were Village Theatre veterans, Kerry Corrigan, who plays the up-tight, by-the-book social worker, Helen in Problem Child, and Ralph Woodcock, who played drunken hotelier Philly, also in Problem
Child. Both milked Walker's words for every last drop of comic effect, while still exploring the deeper issues of social justice and class struggles.

All of the actors conveyed the end-of -the-rope tension that permeates the play effectively, but never missed a laugh from the play's dark and biting humour. Although each play is just an hour, and the plot twists can verge on the absurd, the actors connected to the audience emotionally, and this this reviewer wanting to know what happened to these troubled people after the curtain fell.

Mike Rae's lighting design was understated but dramatic, never taking away from the unfolding drama. The only technical hitch was a cell phone, which sounded more like running water. But these are the quirks which make theatre
the intimate experience it is.