The Stratford, Ontario Theatre Review: Here For Now Theatre’s Apples In Winter
By Ross
She stands and stares, with an air of determination, grief, and discomfort at the industrial kitchen, stocked with all the vital ingredients laid out before her, and contemplates what needs to happen next. These aren’t the best apples, she says, to her inner critic, or maybe the air around her, which will become her confidante and confessor for the next little while in Here For Now Theatre’s magnetic and engaging new offering, Apples in Winter.
Talking just to hear her own voice speak, the play, written with clarity and naturalism by Jennifer Fawcett (Atlas of Mud), which won the National New Play Network Smith Prize and the Susan Glaspell Award, is a gem of a one-hander. Unpacked and baked, the play registers much like that perfect pie that Miriam, played organically and solidly by Birgitte Solem (Blyth Festival’s The Pigeon King), has committed to making for her death row inmate son’s last meal. It’s the apple pie of his youth, with a rich, sweet taste that she knows conjures up the love of a mother’s hug, and she can’t deny him that request. So she finds herself making the last pie her son will ever eat, as she contemplates her son’s actions that one violent night, with the stirred-in judgment of society and the devastating connection and love to her troubled son.
She talks of love or the idea of being a parasite, as she hauntingly studies a tied-up knife that triggers a pain deep within her. Her face tightens with intense discomfort, seasoned with a pinch of anger and a spoonful of grief. He still needs me, she states quite honestly, as I need him, as the ingredients of that emotional love pie are measured and set aside most precisely. It’s all so natural and metaphoric, this pie rendering, where accuracy, like the penitentiary she stands inside, is enforced and required, or there is failure. Don’t forget or bypass this step, she warns us, as the words flow out of her as authentically as a mother’s impulse to feed a child. This is clear, even though her own mother’s idea of dessert was a cigarette and a shot of bourbon.
Developed at the Banff Playwrights Colony, Apples in Winter, after receiving rave reviews during both its American and European runs, has found its Canadian premiere at Here For Now Theatre in association with Hope and Hell Theatre Co. And as directed with a firm grasp of inner turmoil by Robert Ross Parker (Playwrights Realm’s Mothers), the solo play bakes itself to a climax patiently and progressively, giving space and time for Miriam to repeat and unravel the night that brought forth this executing moment, while also giving her space to confess and contemplate her own connection to guilt and grief.
As the clock ticks forward to the inevitable, courtesy of the very exacting lighting, set, and costume design by Darren Burkett (HFN/Crow’s Dinner with the Duchess), Apples in Winter is crafted to create the faultless pie baked to a golden, crispy perfection. Salvation, damnation, and forgiveness are all woven into that lattice pie crust top, displaying a final, taste-filled product made with expert care and the eternal, yet complicated love of a mother, no matter how difficult the recipe to that love truly is.
