Results tagged “nicolalipman”

Here at Drama Club, we generally consider Mirvish shows to be outside our purview (although that certainly doesn't stop them popping up elsewhere on Torontoist). But when we heard that the much ballyhooed Broadway darling Spring Awakening was coming to the Canon Theatre, we couldn't help feeling...intrigued. Maybe it was our geeky theatre-school memories of the scandalous Wedekind play the new musical is based on. More likely, it was Lucille Bluth singing "Mama Who Bore Me" on 90210. Regardless, it was with a healthy amount of curiosity (and perhaps a soupçon of dread) that we went to the theatre on opening night.

December Man, currently playing at CanStage's Berkeley Street Theatre, is not a happy play. But it's won a Governor General's Award, so you know going in that it's going to be about a depressing moment in Canadian history. In this case, the moment in question is the 1989 Montreal Massacre. Rather than dramatizing the events themselves (which would be pretty tasteless), The December Man tells the personal story of one family and how the massacre affected them. The play opens on a middle-aged French-Canadian couple (played by Nicola Lipman and Brian Dooley) making preparations for an unclear event. Eventually, you realize the two have made a suicide pact and are planning to asphyxiate themselves through carbon monoxide poisoning. The rest of the piece plays backwards, Memento-style, each successive scene taking place previous to the one that preceded it. Gradually, you come to understand that the couple's son, Jean (Jeff Irving), was present at the massacre and, overcome with survivor guilt, also killed himself. The couple become unable to cope with life without their son and decide to join him, the mother planning on meeting Jean again in Heaven, the father more skeptical.