So Many Doors - So Many Possibilities

A play that is simply staged with few props, Sour Brides production of So Many Doors begins, well, at the beginning: a giant sepia mobile hangs above the stage while below it the four actors, each with only a chair, start their baby lives to its tinny wind up tune. As the movement work builds through each stage of development, one actor kneels in prayer; all look anxious.

The actors come into their adult form, each bringing their chair downstage. They are two thirty-something Yukon couples in a grief support group for parents whose children have died. Shay and Lyle (playwright Celia McBride and Corey Turner) lost their baby girl Carol Ann; Linee and Jed (Moira Sauer and Derek Metz) their baby son Jed Jr.
“Not lost”, Jed protests. Carelessness hasn’t brought them here. The babies were killed when a car sideswiped a daycare worker pushing the two children in a double stroller. What’s more, these two couples were once the best of friends but a mysterious rift tore their friendships apart before they were parents, and now the support group is bringing them - uncomfortably – together, once more.

This is a strong image; babies side by side in death, as the parents now sit side by side coping with the grief. Lyle has brought Shay to the group with a childish hope for healing; “at least we’re talking”. Shay is in fact barely talking, and when she does it’s angry, resistant, and expresses her increasing depression. Meanwhile, with the second couple, Linee is determined to bring meaning to her grief, insisting on talking about baby JJ, while her husband can’t stand reminders of their son.

Whitehorse is a small community, but a group of grieving parents is even smaller. There are other people in the support group who are mentioned but never seen; one woman who lost her child to cancer, for example. While it’s effective to see the couples side by side as their babies were that fateful day, it’s a bit convenient. And it would be nice to hear what they think about the other grieving parents. Do Shay and Linee think the woman was lucky to have a child who died of cancer? Do they think she suffers more, or less? In her short story People Like that Are the Only People Here, Lorrie Moore describes the parents in the Tiny Tim waiting room at a child cancer ward, and concludes that indeed, people “like that” are the only people there.

And what of the unseen grief counselor? Does he/she long for the session to be over so they can get to the cheerier widows group? Do they go to the bar afterwards and run into these parents? None of these questions are addressed; none of the characters dig this deeply, which makes the play shallower than it need be.

The North plays a big part; darkness, light, isolation. Grief is the small space in which these characters move to be sure, but I wanted to know who they are to their town. Have people rallied round them, or avoided them? Two babies killed in the same stroller; that would make the 6 o’clock news anywhere. How would the couples respond to that scrutiny, maybe sitting side by side in front of cameras, or in court?

Both couples are opposites that attracted. A sweet natured Northerner, Lyle loves the land and the way of life. When he met Shay down south (everywhere is “down south” up North), there was instant attraction. Even the fact she was an escort waiting for a client didn’t put him off. Where other men would see a prostitute, Lyle sees simply a hard worker.
Jed and Linee are opposites that have ceased to attract. They met at a party, partied all the way to a Vegas wedding, then partied all the way up North, where the party stopped for Linee and continued for Jed. He drinks more since his baby died. He disappears on weekends but we don’t learn more. Does he ever wonder if he’s slammed into someone else’s child in a black out, or hope he did? Meanwhile, Linee has a touch of the Susanna Moodie Roughing It In The Bush about her, finding the achingly beautiful landscape more aching than beautiful.

Jed and Lyle enjoy their Red Green times together and glad to be back in the swing of things thanks to the meetings. Not so for the women as Shay remains frozen in anger at sweet-natured Linee. The reason for her anger is linked to the rift that tore the friendship apart. The revelation about the cause of the rift is withheld from the audience and is the hinge on which the first half of the play operates. It turns out that, before the babies, a drunk Linee introduced Shay to a large audience with “and now the Happy Hooker”.

Really, that’s it? This is the big reveal we’ve been waiting for?

Couldn’t it be laughed off as a crass way to introduce a friend? And if Shay is easily hurt by reminders of her days as an escort, wouldn’t she be a tad put out that her husband bought her a donkey named George Clooney, so she can “ride George Clooney whenever she wants”? And wouldn’t he want to avoid the subject of her riding other men? He says it drives him crazy to think about his wife’s past and tries not to think about it. But clearly he does, as the donkey demonstrates. Any buried anger, mistrust or fear remains buried in these characters, in spite of this being a play structured around monologues, inner and otherwise.

The playwright shows us that the characters are hurting, but doesn’t go further. When upbeat Linee mentions her suicide attempt, it is more to show how Linee is someone who is trying to talk about things, rather than to show how dark it’s gotten for her.

As for the performers – all four are strong and engaging. There are some lovely, believable moments, particularly when the men chop wood together, keeping busy to dull their pain. Grief is expressed in different ways and manifests into individual destructive behavior as well as, for some, peace.

Playwright Celia McBride clearly knows the Yukon, and has come up with a good concept to explore four types of people who live there. Two of Canada’s best playwrights, Wendy Lil and Joan McLeod, chose one woman plays to express the human response to Northern living in The Occupation of Heather Rose and the one act Jewel.

With four people, McBride manages to accomplish less, not putting enough meat on her characters. We need to know their shape in order to see them change shape. So Many Doors has so many possibilities that it’s hard not to concentrate on what those possibilities could be, rather than the play it is.