In ‘The Children’ a disaster fuels an inspired exploration of generational responsibility
Boulder’s Butterfly Effect Theatre Company starts off its new season with a barn-burner of a play by Lucy Kirkwood that’s got more layers than an entire bag of onions. Ostensibly a story about the aftermath of a nuclear disaster in England, The Children manages to touch on a decade’s worth of therapy sessions in a tight, intermissionless armrest-grabber that puts BETC right back on the map as one of Colorado’s top theatres.
Helmed by BETC Producing Artistic Director Stephen Weitz, The Children features the best three-person cast I’ve seen in some time. The amazing Sam Gregory is back from his theatrical hiatus in the role of Robin — a retired nuclear power plant engineer living with his wife, Hazel on the east coast of England. An earthquake-tsunami-nuclear event somewhat based on the Fukushima disaster in 2011 has happened here, and the couple has decamped to a cottage a bit further inland from their water-logged and irradiated home.
Hazel, beautifully played by Martha Harmon Pardee (who recently killed in the Cherry Creek production of Ann), is also a retired nuclear physicist who worked at the power plant with Robin. Their house is a mess and the small farm they were managing is gone, but other than a few annoyances like spotty electricity and a limited menu, they’re a lot better off than the many who died from the tsunami. Their main concern is the few milk cows they had, but Robin has been visiting and feeding them and tells Hazel they’re OK.
Maybe, just maybe they can ride this thing out, and they’re not spending a lot of time thinking about how culpable they might be from their own roles as designers of the plant. Like Fukushima, it was built close to the water, making the reactors and backup systems extremely vulnerable to such an event.
It takes the arrival of someone from their past to wake them up to that realization.
Gin Walker as Rose endures an earful from Hazel (Martha Harmon Pardee) in ‘The Children’ | Photo: Michael Ensminger
Rose: another tsunami
The Children reminds me just a bit of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolf in how it confines two couples in a small space to watch them slug it out. It’s dark as hell in many places, but also quite funny. The other player is Rose, who we see at the top of the play with a bloody nose and jumper — gained when she arrived at the cabin so silently and unexpectedly that Hazel whacked her in the face. (Accidentally on purpose, we’ll later surmise.)
It doesn’t take long for us to learn that Rose (Gin Walker) and Robin were having an affair before and during his marriage to Hazel — although it’s been a few years since they’re hooked up. With Robin as the common denominator, the action does play out as the story of two couples, and the simmering and later explosive resentment between them all is core to the story — but not all of it by a long shot.
Because Rose, you see, is also a nuclear physicist who worked at the plant long ago. And she arrives with a message and a few very important questions that frame the story. Walker is tremendous in the role, skillfully balancing Rose as both Jezebel and lost puppy. She’s a damaged and spent woman with a dim view of herself who nevertheless digs deep to find a way to make a bit more sense of her life as she enters the final chapter.
What do we owe our children? What do we owe future generations in general? It’s the central theme of this play and the reason the title is The Children and not The Meltdown or whatever. While Robin and Hazel are trying to be active retirees and not potted plants in front of the TV, Kirkwood raises the question of whether that’s the correct approach — or if it even matters. Robin may be looking after the cows and making bad wine and Hazel is doing yoga and eating healthy, but eventually they’re being urged by Rose to confront whether that’s right, or enough. She presents them with an opportunity to step up, move out of their comfort zone and do what is, to her, the right thing.
It’s while the trio are wrestling with this question that the more base questions about who’s fucking whom and when come to the fore and drive the sturm und drang that mirrors the turmoil beyond the cottage door and ultimately informs where these characters end up.
Yet another piece of this dense puzzle involves Hazel and Robin’s highly dependent grown daughter. We don’t see her, but she calls several times and we learn that, even at 38, she’s something of a ball-and-chain for Hazel in particular, who can never refuse her call. As Robin suggests later in that oh-so-British way, the best thing Hazel could do for her is to fuck off and die.
But while Robin and Rose may be inclined to sacrifice themselves and do just that, Hazel is the maximizer. She’s the planner, the A student, the one who’s going to squeeze every bit of goodness out of life — and she plans to live a long time. As she says at one point, “I can’t stop wanting more.”
And is that why there are cruise ships full of oldsters fouling up the ocean long past their best-by date? Kirkwood seems to suggest so, although she’s only 39 — an easier age from which to level such accusations.
Photo: Michael Ensminger
Weitz pulled this one together with as much technical precision as he did carefully exploring the many and varied emotional themes and moments in the play. There’s violence, there’s dancing, there are accusations both valid and imagined and it’s all very much in the audience’s face. Gregory, as he always does, finds a million ways verbally and physically to fashion a one-of-a-kind character simply fascinating to watch, and Walker and Pardee are right there with him. The three create a striking and vivid tableau of people facing down demons both ancient and immediate, and it’s deeply affecting.
The Children could be seen as a cautionary tale about climate change just as much as it’s a reminder to make every moment count. I appreciated its timeliness as well as its timelessness — a mix that should give this work a very long shelf life and that sets the table for a high-quality piece of theatre not to be missed.
Leave A Comment