Escape from Happiness by
George F, Waiker, produced
by Presentation House
Productions. To May 6,
information: 990-3474.

Martin Millerchip

Curtain Call
muillerchip@nsnews.com

THE family at the cen-_
tre of Escape From
Happiness is, at first
glance, ripe for the label
“dysfunctional.”

However, award-winning Toronto playwright George F.
Walker might first want us to determine what is “normal”
before we start firming up an “ab™ or two to hang around the
necks of families on the fringe of society.

Escape From Happiness takes place in the kitchen of a run-
down home, in a rundown neighbourhood where smaileime
criminals are “known” to the police. The family itself (Walker
gives us no last name but has written other scripts about them)
has been running down since Tom, an alcoholic police detective,
abandoned his wife and three daughters some 10 years ago.

We first meet his wife, Nora, and their youngest daughter,
Gail, as they discover Gail’s husband, Junior, lying in a pool of
his own blood on the kitchen floor. Junior, barely smart enough
to hold a job, has gotten himself beaten up by what the police
couple who investigate believe might be “organized” crime. Gail
calls her two elder sisters for a family meeting. Big help!

Middle sister Mary-Ann is at a “crossroads” in her own twi-
light self-obsessed world and has apparently just left her husband
and baby. Oldest sister Elizabeth is a lawyer and therefore, one
might suppose, well placed to help her family. But Elizabeth,
too, has issues.

Aman who “looks like” Tom is back in the house, living Eke
an invalid and apparently incapable of heating his own soup.
Elizabeth’s anger at corrupt and brutal ceqis is nothing com-
pared with the anger she harbours against her father and she
". won't even enter the house unless this pale shadow of a patsi-

KAREN Austin and John Prowse tentatively explore the possibilities of new beginnings after a lite destroyed
by anger and alcohol in the George F. Walker comedy Escape From Happiness at Presentation House.

arch is upstairs out of sight.

In due course, Nora is arrested for drugs found in the base-
ment, Elizabeth captures (literally) one of Junior’s assailants and
Mary-Ann learns she can move on from fear of her father.

And that is the genius of Walker’s walk on the wacky side.
Every so often, in the middle of bizarre behaviour or improba-
bie piot developments that we can safely divorce ourselves from
because “we” are not “like that,” something real happens. Some
heart-stopping moment of pain or painful truth based on some
element of family that we can and do recognize is exposed.
Waiker may not choose to solve all the problems he sketches in,
but then why should he? Many families survive despite their
problems — their “evil shadow” — not because they solve
them.

I don’t mean to give the impression that Walker merely
introduces heavy subject matter to add weight or colour to the
zany antics of what would otherwise be a family farce. Then

again, perhaps he does. But his control of his plot is so tight
that much of what initially appears absurd is ultimately explained

See Comedy Page 20

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