WAITING ROOM by Diane Flacks, directed by Richard Greenblatt, with Ari Cohen, Michelle Monteith, Jordan Pettle, Warona Setshwaelo, Jane Spidell and Jenny Young. Tarragon Theatre (30 Bridgman). Now in previews, opens January 14 and runs to February 15, Tuesday-Saturday 8 pm, matinees Sunday and January 17, 24 and 31 at 2:30 pm. $29-$55, previews $23-$27, some $15 rush. 416-531-1827, tarragontheatre.com
The helplessness that parents feel with a sick infant goes under the microscope in Diane Flackss Waiting Room, in which a young couple, Chrissie and Jeremy, have to deal with their young daughters brain tumour.
Though a hotshot neuro-oncological surgeon, Andre Malloy, successfully removes the tumour, he opts for further treatment that some see as controversial.
Add to the dramatic mix the fact that one of the characters, dealing with early onset Alzheimers, turns to experimental drugs to handle it.
Jenny Young plays Melissa De Angelo, a smart but conflicted research fellow working with the arrogant Malloy.
I see Melissas struggle representing the world of the play, says the actor, who spent last summer performing at Stratford. Theres no absolute right or wrong here, which is something that both the parents and the doctors struggle with. What it comes down to is ethics, where the heart sits theres no hard and fast answer that you can find in rule books.
But Melissa, whos more comfortable working with numbers in a lab than face to face with other people, has another conflict, too, for shes involved personally as well as professionally with Malloy, her mentor.
Over the course of the play she becomes the teacher and grows to a place of understanding in terms of medical ethics, humanity, empathy and how relationships change over time.
Melissa watches the different ways characters deal with the possible tragedies in their lives.
Jeremy, the father, cant sit still but has to be doing something, either going for walks or researching the cancer genome. His wife, Chrissie, needs to talk with someone, and finds a companion in Brenda, another mother whose son has been getting treatment for years.
Young notes that while the material is hard to write about without bringing audiences down or turning maudlin, Flacks has a wonderful sense of comic timing and an understanding of the lightness thats needed to tell this story. All the characters have a side that doesnt wallow in sadness.
Melissa, for instance, can be a bumbler, someone who does the right thing at the wrong time or tries really hard and messes it all up. Brendas sat in a hospital waiting room for so long that shes become crass and, calling people out on what they do, voices every inappropriate thing you wish you could say in the situation.
In the end, though, the play addresses compassion, how to give it and how to take it. Melissa begins in a world of research, which is clean and provides concepts with boundaries and rules that dont change. But eventually she, like the other characters, has to deal with life, which is less predictable.
That chaotic quality intrudes even into the clean, coded, structured world of the hospital, where everyone patients, doctors, parents has to cope with a world thats messy as shit on all levels.
