THEATRE REVIEW: THE MIDDLE PLACE
19 FEB/11

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 4 out of 5

TORONTO - It is fitting -- occasionally frustrating, but fitting nonetheless -- that THE MIDDLE PLACE defies theatrical convention and takes to the stage without a recognizable beginning or a definitive ending. It is, after all, an unconventional piece of stagecraft -- a slice of life carved rare from the too-often forgotten underbelly of suburban Toronto, serving as stand-in for any big city in North America, one suspects.

Specifically, it is a show about kids -- young people in that middle place between childhood and the adult world, between dependence and independence, between hope and despair. They are kids, storm-tossed on a sea of unaccustomed hormones and trying to come to grips with their own individuality in the face of parents, teachers and caregivers who don't seem to understand or, in some cases, don't seem to even care. The kind of kids, in other words, who make a hopefully transitional home at Rexdale's Youth Without Shelter; the kind of kids one is likely to find in any vivisection of a modern community; and finally, the kind of kids who sat down with playwright Andrew Kushnir over the course of several months and talked to him about their lives, their hopes, their dreams, their frustrations and their disappointments.

Now, after an intense period of workshops and dramaturgy, Kushnir has excerpted those interviews, blended them with interviews with YWS staff, and after suitable changes to protect individual privacy, shaped it all into an hour-long stage show that officially premiered at the Berkeley Street Theatre Thursday. A production of Project: Humanity, THE MIDDLE PLACE is presented in a collaboration between the Canadian Stage Company and Theatre Passe Muraille, where the work was staged in workshop last year.

A work for five actors -- Akosua Amo-Adem, Antonio Cayonne, Jessica Greenberg, Kevin Walker and Kushnir himself -- it is, in the final analysis, less theatre than eavesdropping masquerading as theatre. With Kushnir in the role of largely unseen inquisitor, the other four cast members open windows into the lives of 16 homeless youth living at the YWS facility, and four of the caseworkers employed there.

Designer Jung-Hye Kim sets most of the work in an oval of intense light (heightened by the unobtrusive hand of Kimberly Purtell), surrounded by an imaginary force field through which the four staff members can pass at will to offer what is essentially the compassionate outsider's take on things. Inside that circle, however, is the world inhabited by the kids -- alternately troubled and troubling, confused and confusing, hopeful and hopeless, frustrated and frustrating. With director Alan Dilworth firmly in control and choreographer Monica Dottor cuing the character changes, it becomes a stew-pot of life on simmer, rather than at a rolling boil. Each character is given as much or as little time as is necessary to give an audience a glimpse into the world each inhabits or hopes to inhabit, those worlds often playing in jarring counterpoint to the world as they see it.

In the shifting panorama of characters the work presents, Amo-Adem, Cayonne, Greenberg and Walker are all accorded plenty of opportunity to strut their stuff, within the perimeters of Dilworth's tight direction. And while each of them scores at least a few telling moments, Amo-Addem and Walker offer thrilling demonstrations for not just the depth of their talents but their range as well, donning and doffing characters with the ease of chameleons.

Without a regular beginning or a regular ending, this is a work that neither asks tough questions nor answers them. Instead, it dwells in THE MIDDLE PLACE, between the asking and the answer.