PIECE BY PIECE by Alison Lawrence (mcguffin company). At Factory Mainspace (125 Bathurst). Jan 12 at 7 pm, Jan 14 at 9:30 pm, Jan 6 at 9:15 pm, Jan 17 at 4:30 pm, Jan 18 at 1:45 pm. $15. 416-966-1062, fringetoronto.com. Rating: NNN
In Piece By Piece, three families meet in a hospital where each is tested by issues dealing with the start or end of life.
Over the course of Alison Lawrence’s often moving play, we meet six people. Teenage Steffie (Virgilia Griffith) has lost her mother and keeps returning to the hospital where she died; her father, Bert (Brian Young), turns to drink to escape his feelings of guilt.
Barb (Linda Goranson) and Frank (Terrence Bryant), married 47 years, have to deal with Frank’s progressive Alzheimer’s, and it’s Barb who has the harder time coping. Even though her husband’s still alive, she feels that she’s already become a widow.
Jessie (Mary Francis Moore) and John (John Cleland) want to have a child but face roadblocks; John, a geriatric doctor at the hospital, is the physician assigned to Barb and Frank.
Their interwoven stories take the audience on a path that includes loss, sadness and support, though the tragedy is balanced by moments of light and laughter. David Ferry’s clear and focused direction, aided by Stephan Droege’s clever lighting, moves the action smoothly from one scene to the next; the actors who aren’t in an episode watch it from the shadows, just outside focus.
The characters who stand out are the women, bonding over their problems, sometimes sympathetically sharing them, sometimes being reprimanded by one another for how they deal with them, but they’re always present to help each other on the journey.
Moore’s quietly frantic Jessie keeps a wall around herself to stave off sorrow, even when she appears to follow her husband’s advice. Goranson’s Barb, tired of being strong for her husband, has a fine scene in which she stands up to Bert and gives advice, politely, about his daughter. Griffith is a standout as Steffie, emotion as powerful on her face as in her words.