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Homesick

Comedy by Alberta playwright Conni Massing, opened February 21, 2000 on the Citadel Theatre’s Rice stage, in a production by Workshop West Theatre, and directed by outgoing Workshop West Artistic Director, David Mann. It was originally commissioned by Workshop West, and workshopped over a period of three years at Banff Playwrights Colony and Alberta Playwrights Network. The history of its development and production provides yet another testimonial to the collaborative theatre environment in Alberta.

Homesick is set, as you might expect, in a home, full of the detritus of domestic living: National Geographic covers, curling irons, Christmas cards, licence plates. The living room is full of funeral flower arrangements and casserole dishes. In the midst of all this, the family patriarch, Cliff (John Wright), slumps in an armchair in an apparently comatose state for most of the first act, only occasionally providing a guttural response to the family activities, much like British patriarch in Simon Gray’s Close of Play,

The play opens with a C&W song by the daughter, Rhona (Annette Loiselle). She performs karaoke style from the attic space overlooking the room, as her stage, and the words of the song, “These Boots are Made for Walking,” are projected on the wall beside her, followed by the message, “Call Your Mother.” The scene is thus set for her return home. Her grandmother has died, and she feels she should establish a more empathetic bond with her mother. Her motives, it turns out, are more selfish. At about the same time she learns about her grandmother’s death, she discovers that she is pregnant, and she speculates whether the two souls passed each other in the tunnel, and how much of one has been passed onto the other. Homesick is a matriarchal play, an enactment of Virginia Woolf’s adage, “we think back through our mothers if we are women.” The mother, Clara (Sharon Bakker), initially appears as the stoic housefrau, solicitously providing meals, and resisting her daughter’s intrusions into her feelings. She has her own secrets, however, which she has disclosed only in a diary hidden in the attic. As Rhona struggles with her apprehensions about parenthood, and her fraught relationship with her boyfriend, Gary (Jeff Page), she gradually learns about her mother’s earlier journey through the same territory. Clara, in dealing with her own mother’s death, also comes to terms with the ghosts of the past.

Clara’s return to the past is accomplished through a mental time warp: she begins to believe that Rhona is a teenager, and treats her accordingly. In effect Clara inhabits the time when she last saw her own boyfriend, and made the decision to stay with Rhona’s father, who at this point is resurrected from the armchair to participate in the action, and to make his own discoveries about the marriage. The mother-daughter relationship devolves into a hysterical confrontation. Act One ends with Rhona stabbing Gary.

Act Two opens with the revelation that Gary was only faking the blood and his death: this is, after all, a romantic comedy, not a tragedy. The emotional level continues to build, however, with Rhona’s histrionic doubts about imminent motherhood. Gary is equally inept, although more humorous. He takes Cliff’s place in the chair, suggesting that the men in this menagerie are inclined to cop out when faced with difficult choices. Finally, at Clara’s suggestion, he too arouses himself, and leaves, his departure not even noticed by Rhona. The final vignette, after the grandmother’s funeral, is one of mother and daughter throwing flour at each other, as a form of emotional release. Clara has finally come to terms with her inheritance in an eloquent obituary, an important part of which is the family stories. The play’s exploration of the ways in which individuals use words -- or silence -- is one of its strongest points. Even Cliff finally writes a poem for Clara.

Homesick resembles Massing’s earlier play, Gravel Run, in its portrait of a prairie family with secrets that finally force their way out of the past in bizarre, grotesque ways. And the funeral rites of Western Canadians – the endless parade of jelly salads and casseroles, the cliched sympathy cards, and the obligatory family reunions, are gently satirized.

Commentary by Anne Nothof, Athabasca University

Last updated 2018-09-06