As physician Dr. Vincent Felitti once memorably put it, “it’s hard to get enough of something that almost works.” In Duncan Macmillan’s kaleidoscopic People, Places and Things, that’s not limited to the benzos, speed, or a “fairly expensive Rioja” — it’s the ongoing process, the ongoing performance of recovery.
Originally produced in 2015 by U.K. theatre company Headlong, People, Places and Things premiered at London’s National Theatre before transferring to Brooklyn’s St. Ann’s Warehouse in 2017. Coal Mine Theatre’s Toronto production pays compact homage to elements of the original’s staging (which I didn’t experience firsthand) — cannily interpreted in designer Steve Lucas’ gridded island of stage, white tiled walls, and flickering halogen lights. Cultural references are adapted to be more identifiably Torontonian (a line in Macmillan’s original script about “theatres above pubs” becomes “storefront theatres”; the medical facility is styled as Toronto’s CAMH, one of the production’s sponsorship partners). Clocking in at 140 minutes including one 15-minute intermission, director Diana Bentley’s brisk interpretation delivers a close, equivocal look at addiction and its delicate substitutions.
The ice-cold open drops us into the middle of a disintegrating production of Chekhov’s The Seagull, where Emma (Louise Lambert), as Nina, pitches through a substance-induced episode before the audience’s eyes. The scene topples into bright chaos, a flurry of nightclub dancers and buzzing lights, Emma tearing off her costume and wig as this particular trip takes the wheel.
Having lost the reality of the reality, Emma haphazardly checks herself into a rehab facility as “Nina” — just one of the theatrical identities she appropriates throughout — hoping for a “certificate” that will permit a return to work. To “get back out into the real world,” she says. Things do feel slightly unreal in there, whether it’s the prank-loving doctor who pretends to eat a stool sample or that all of the staff seem to be in addiction recovery themselves.
We watch (and hear, in Thomas Ryder Payne’s expressive soundscape) Emma’s grueling detox. Multiples of her, played by the gamely be-wigged ensemble, pour in from every corner of the theatre, drawn towards the centrifugal pull of her private suffering. They make several chilling returns throughout the two acts.
Bentley and movement director Alyssa Martin tailor these appearances to suit the Coal Mine’s subterranean well, eerily bracketing the more straightforward scenes. The ensemble — a mesmerizing configuration of Nickeshia Garrick, Sam Grist, Sarah Murphy-Dyson, Kwaku Okyere, and Kaleb Tekeste — contour the narrow space in angular, almost painful-looking physical unity.
In Bentley’s kinetic staging, stillness is rare. All the figures seem to be in constant orbit of each other, especially in group meetings, where Emma and her rehab-mates do mandated “practice,” as they call it, playing characters in each other’s lives: improv exercise as therapy.
Throughout, Emma expresses a vibrant, frustrating skepticism in the methods of recovery afforded, resisting them out of intellectual stubbornness. Her life is dominated by the hunt for mind alteration, but no higher power can touch the pills and the drink, which have never let her down. “If I’m not in character, I’m not sure I’m really there,” she tells rehab-mate Mark (an affecting Farhang Ghajar). “Acting gives me the same thing I get from drugs and alcohol. Good parts are just harder to come by.”
Lambert embodies the caustic, recoiling Emma with extraordinary physical and emotional stamina, hands thrust in her hoodie pockets as if they might contain keys to another, less excruciating world. You can feel the effort it takes to keep her head up. Despite Emma’s unreliability as a storyteller, the misery and frustration are palpable.
Emma returns to her parents’ home, all her practice in the safe suspension of rehab ready to be put to the test. This late scene offers (mild spoiler ahead) the clearest view of, if not why Emma is the way she is, then what didn’t help her avoid it. Fiona Reid, who appears as both a caring doctor and group therapist at the clinic, emerges for a third time as Emma’s mother, her cruelty more cutting for its genteel, equally practiced delivery.
After spending the duration of the show watching Emma struggle within the vacuum of rehab, we finally see her in context — filled with the people, places, and things that pose the greatest threat to an addict’s recovery. It’s a punishing ending, frightening and lonely. And yet Lambert’s pained, solitary presence doesn’t dispel the thought that Emma might be able to sustain the unforgiving glare of sobriety. Perhaps I just want her to.
People, Places and Things runs at Coal Mine Theatre until March 7. Tickets are available here.
Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.
WRITTEN BY
Naomi Skwarna
Naomi Skwarna is a National Magazine Award-winning writer with bylines in the New York Times, Vulture, The Walrus, the Globe and Mail, Toronto Life, Hazlitt, the British Journal of Photography, and others. She has written previously about theatre for NOW Magazine and the Toronto Standard, and sometimes still does via her very intermittent newsletter, Seeing is Forgetting.
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