Play Review: The Children by playwright Lucy Kirkwood

Yesterday was a lovely early fall Sunday afternoon. A good day to see a play at the Belfry Theatre in Victoria, go for a walk afterwards in the late afternoon sun and then out to supper at the local Fernwood Inn pub. The Children by playwright Lucy Kirkwood seemed as though it would be an easy review to write. However, The Children is full of the complexities of old relationships, the consequences of recent history and the legacy left to our children to clean up. The play began with the reunion of three old friends, each retired and in their late sixties. Self-assured Rose, played by Brenda Robins, arrives quite out of the blue, to visit her old friend and rather frantic but organized Hazel played by Nancy Palk. Despite these differences, they appear to be glad to see each other. Conversation seems a bit disjointed until Hazel’s husband, Robin played by Joseph Ziegler, comes in from his day on the farm caring for the cows. In a very modest kitchen and sitting room, it is obvious that life has become difficult with electricity, water and groceries carefully rationed. Hazel has offered tea and has prepared a small salad. Robin, quite gregarious and loving to both women, produces a bottle of ‘parsnip wine’. As the play progresses, it becomes obvious that the three friends were colleagues at a nearby power station as well as romantic rivals in their younger years. References to an explosion are often made as they catch up on their lives, along with a difficult proposal made by Rose to Hazel and to Robin. Previously developed relationships in this sudden reunion provide laugh out loud humour along with the tension of old jealousy. The question of children is danced around quite delicately. While Robin and Hazel had four children, Rose had not had any children. Only one of the children, Lauren, is mentioned by name, which I found rather curious. The Children, an almost two hour play, is about the effects of a nuclear meltdown tragedy, leaving the audience with the question, and maybe the answer, about who is really responsible for the clean up of any global tragedy.

“How paramount the future is to the present 

when one is surrounded by children.”

~ Charles Darwin