REVIEW: Girls & Boys at Here for Now Theatre Company
Content warning: this review contains mention of extreme violence and sexual assault, and spoilers about the play.
Just a short walk from the Tom Patterson Theatre is a much humbler performance space, with a gem of contemporary playwriting tucked into its linoleum. Here for Now, AD’d by Fiona Mongillo, is in residence at the Falstaff Family Centre in Stratford, separate from the Festival but of supremely high calibre, as evidenced by this production. Girls & Boys is as far from fluff as one can get and certainly not fit for young audiences — but for those able to stomach its subject matter, it’s a poignant and boundary-pushing performance well worth the jaunt across the Avon.
Dennis Kelly’s play is a monologue from a mother who, at first glance, might seem quite normal, if a little haunted. She met her husband at the airport; she carved out a space for herself in the film industry; she gave birth to two healthy children, a boy and a girl. Her life was normal, idyllic even, small successes embedded into a happy existence.
But her husband slowly receded, and whispers of an affair bubbled to the top of the crumbling marriage. He went away for a little while, leaving the family to wonder where he’d gone — until he came back with a horrifying vengeance.
Girls & Boys is a pressure cooker of a play, a tennis match between tragedy and the family life which preceded it. Kelly’s words tumble and ricochet, intoxicating in texture and trajectory. The story is easy to follow, and yet structured such that every next moment is surprising. The familicide as described is frank, detached, and clinical in its handling of details, recounted in small fragments until the well bursts — and when it does, there’s no choice but to be swept away.
Mongillo occupies every inch of her playing space — a small platform in what’s usually a kindergarten classroom. Mongillo’s text work is sublime, her physicality precise yet understated. Mongillo never telegraphs the doom waiting at the end of the play, and yet in retrospect, the sadness punctuating her earlier scenes is completely earned, subtle, and real as the play oscillates between moments in the present and those spent with memories of her children. Kelly’s language seems a natural fit for Mongillo — and she implements Kelly’s prescribed working-class accent flawlessly. The occasional humour communicated in the woman’s happier moments never feels forced or at odds with the thrust of the play. Director Lucy Jane Atkinson has coaxed out the best in both Mongillo and Kelly, directing with a light hand and allowing Mongillo to fall into a pacing that feels completely natural.
Girls & Boys enters into exchange not only with real-world events, but other English solo shows: structurally, there’s a strong resemblance to Simon Stephens’ Sea Wall, about the loss of a daughter in a villainless accident — it’s striking how similar Stephens’ and Kelly’s monologues are, despite a fundamental difference of to whom blame might be ascribed in the untimely death of a child as narrated by a parent. As well, there’s a remarkable similarity to one of Sarah Kane’s unpublished plays, Comic Monologue, which recounts in great detail an oral rape. As such Girls & Boys references the controversial In-Yer-Face movement of the ‘90s but complicates it — we never see images of the crime committed, only hear about it from the surviving mother. In a way, it’s as if Kelly has married In-Yer-Face content with ancient Greek storytelling methods, peppering in allusions to contemporary culture and turns of phrase. This sort of ingenuity in the relationship between form and content is solo writing at its best, and it’s all the better in the capable hands of Mongillo and Atkinson.
Girls & Boys is no easy watch, and could do with a more substantial content warning for this production. That’s one of the age-old uncertainties surrounding plays heavy in subject matter — just how much can audiences be told in advance of a play without lessening the impact of its content? I’m on the side of the audience, here: I simply can’t imagine the experience of Girls & Boys as a parent or victim of family violence, and particularly not without a more transparent warning about the play’s contents. But as a piece of theatre — spare, unpretentious, and superbly conceived — Girls & Boys at Here for Now simply shines, a welcome instance of contemporary British dramaturgy just across the river from the Stratford Festival.
Girls & Boys runs through August 7 at Here for Now Theatre Company. Tickets are available here.
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.
LEARN MORE
iPhoto caption: Mazin Elsadig in 'The Comeuppance.' Photo by Dahlia Katz. Set design by Shannon Lea Doyle, costume design by Ming Wong, lighting design by Jason Hand.
Macabre and drama-filled yet surprisingly gentle, The Comeuppance will probably be most compelling to the around-40 crowd who share its specific touchstones and millennial angst from a high-school experience bookended by Columbine and 9/11.
iPhoto caption: Christina Tannous and Béatrice René‑Décarie in 'Le Malentendu.' Photo by Mathieu Taillardas.
REVIEW: TfT delivers humour and cruelty in striking rendition of Camus’ Le Malentendu
Director Karine Ricard banishes all earthly joy from the scene, leaving behind an almost lunar coldness.
iPhoto caption: Olivier Normand in 'The Far Side of the Moon.' Photo by Li Wang.
REVIEW: Lepage’s ethereal The Far Side of the Moon is insomniac theatre
The Far Side of the Moon begins and ends with a large mirror on stage, and the show extracts enigmatic power from the tantalizing question of whether its protagonist is losing himself in his reflection, or moving toward self-discovery.
iPhoto caption: Shaakir Muhammad, Christopher Gerty, and Matthieu Pagès with artists of the National Ballet in 'Procession.' Photo by Karolina Kuras. Courtesy of the National Ballet of Canada.
REVIEW: National Ballet’s Procession tangles the lines of sorrow and sensuality
Procession, the National Ballet of Canada’s brooding and stylized world premiere ballet, rushes to the stage with startling vitality — and does so at a funeral.
iPhoto caption: The company of 'CHILD-ish.' Photo by Jae Yang.
REVIEW: Tarragon’s CHILD-ish takes a hopeful and hilarious look at life through kids’ eyes
It’s a giggly good time, if a pinch oversweet.
iPhoto caption: Vincent LeBlanc-Beaudoin, Drew Moore, and Peter James Haworth in 'Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre.' Photo by Emelia Hellman.
REVIEW: At Ottawa’s GCTC, you won’t expect what happens when Abraham Lincoln Goes to the Theatre
Sarah Kitz’s production leans into the play’s real strength: its exploration of narrative. The characters attempt to narrativize the play’s events before, after, and even while they take place. But their failure to impose narrative logic onto complex realities only results in escalating cycles of violence.
iPhoto caption: Photo by Aisling Murphy.
In the darkest months of Yukon winter, it’s all about the Sun Room
I’m here for a week in January as a guest of Nakai Theatre, a hub for theatrical experimentation and outside-the-box programming in Canada’s westernmost territory.
Armchairs, tattoos, and an online theatre magazine
When I started at Intermission, my world was limited to the confines of an armchair. Arts journalism was a high it felt dangerously fruitless to chase. The life stretched ahead of me was amorphous and frightening, a chasm filled with hand sanitizer and immigration concerns. It was worth crying over a spilled kombucha and scrubbing at the stain.
iPhoto caption: Liz Appel headshot courtesy of Liz Appel.
Five questions with Wights playwright Liz Appel
Intermission spoke with Appel over email for a brief Q&A about Wights, now playing at Crow’s Theatre until February 9.
Call for applications: Publishing and editorial assistant
Intermission Magazine is seeking a dynamic and collaborative individual to join our team.
iPhoto caption: What Writing Can Do: The 2025 Musical Theatre Critics Lab
Announcing What Writing Can Do: The 2025 Musical Theatre Critics Lab
What Writing Can Do is timed to coincide with the Grand and Theatre Aquarius’ co-production of Waitress, which will serve as a jumping-off point for discussions throughout the Lab.
iPhoto caption: A Christmas Story production still by Dahlia Katz.
REVIEW: A Christmas Story feels fresh at Theatre Aquarius
If you want to catch A Christmas Story before it closes, good luck — the show is close to sold out, and with the talent on that stage, it’s not hard to see why.
Comments