REVIEW: Interior Design sparkles with zillennial wit

iPhoto caption: Interior Design production still by Jae Yang.

Reviews

/By Aisling Murphy / Oct 27, 2024

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Taylor Swift has written a lot of songs about the somewhat zillennial notion of “ghosting,” in which a romantic partner or friend disappears from a relationship without a word. 

But there’s one spectral song in particular I’d like to think has made it onto the playlists of Olivia, Maya, Cecilia, and Sophie, four friends at the centre of Rosa Laborde’s powerfully funny Interior Design, now playing in a succulent world premiere at Tarragon Theatre. In 2010’s “Last Kiss,” Swift wishes the person who abandoned her all the best, without an inch of scorn: “I hope it’s nice where you are,” she sings to no one. “I hope the sun shines, and it’s a beautiful day, but something reminds you that you wish you had stayed.”

Indeed, it’s no fun being ghosted, but in the age of social media and decontextualized therapy-speak, it’s a fairly common occurrence. Interior Design watches its Peloton-using, social media-obsessed heroines from an empathetic vantage point, holding space for these women and their problems. Intermittently, one friend will break free from the pod to let us in on her innermost thoughts in the form of a direct-to-audience monologue.

There’s Sophie (a breathtakingly comic Sara Farb), a life coach in search of new purpose in life, and Maya (Meghan Swaby), a conflict-averse marketing professional. Cecilia (Anita Majumdar) is the life of the party, a skincare addict who’s unafraid to use a heavy filter when posting selfies on Instagram. And finally, there’s Olivia (Rong Fu), a deeply burnt-out journalist whose pervasive negativity has finally pushed her friends to stage an intervention.

Under a less confident director, Interior Design might crumble into a vortex of tropes and riffings on girlhood, but Kat Sandler takes Laborde’s invitation to dig deep and runs with it, moving the text forward at a breakneck, exhilarating pace. When Olivia decides to decorate Sophie’s new condo, she leans into her impish side by furnishing it with glittery wallpaper and garish macrame plant holders — Sandler and set designer Shannon Lea Doyle have a field day as the apartment evolves into a mishmash of rainbows and sequins. 

And when Interior Design gets serious — when one of the women disconnects from the group chat, never to be seen again — Laborde and Sandler handle that, too, with grace. A worse version of this play would preoccupy its second half with winning the departed friend back; here, the friends simply accept the loss, crushing though it is, and honour the friendship despite its spiky ending. That’s just how things go sometimes.

Farb, Fu, Swaby, and Majumdar are inspired casting, each representing an all-too-real component of growing older as a woman. Farb captures Sophie’s divorced ennui with dry, biting humour, and seems aware that Sophie is the butt of the joke more often than not. Farb sometimes seems to laugh at Sophie — and fair enough, her life coach antics are a lot — and yet Farb still furnishes the character with depth. 

Fu’s Olivia, too, is deeply felt and lovingly acted. When we discover a recent source of Olivia’s stress, it’s shocking, but not surprising, thanks to Fu’s ability to play subtext without telegraphing the end of the play too soon. Swaby similarly captures Maya’s professional (and romantic) stagnation without casting judgment on her; when Maya feels her life fall apart around her, we feel it too. Majumdar has the hardest job to do — Cecilia’s the character most rooted in stereotype — but with huge, expressive eyes and a controlled wielding of anxious freneticism, she builds an arc for Cecilia that makes the end of the play feel like a warm hug.

As a heavily rhinestoned chick flick for the stage, Interior Design might not be for everyone. But Sandler and Laborde are exactly the Canadian theatre artists you want to be sculpting a play like this, a project that, in places, almost feels like an adaptation of 2019’s Someone Great thanks to its layered, tender portraits of young professional women. Interior Design, too, feels like a positive shift for Tarragon, a well-produced, well-written new play that recalls pre-pandemic years of frequent Hannah Moscovitch and Sandler premieres. Grab something sparkly, load up some Swift on your Spotify queue, and head to Tarragon before Interior Design closes — and, of course, bring your best girlfriend.

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Interior Design runs at Tarragon Theatre until November 10. Tickets are available here.

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Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.

WRITTEN BY

Aisling Murphy

Aisling is Intermission's former senior editor and the theatre reporter for the Globe and Mail. She likes British playwright Sarah Kane, most songs by Taylor Swift, and her cats, Fig and June. She was a 2024 fellow at the National Critics Institute in Waterford, CT.

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