Detroit captures ominous desperation of suburban life

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      By Lisa D’Amour. Directed by Lois Anderson. A Mitch and Murray production at Studio 16 on November 4. Continues until November 19

      Keeping up appearances ain’t what it used to be. Detroit explores the fading, fraying fabric of the American dream.

      Lisa D’Amour’s script is set on the back patios of adjacent bungalows in a suburban development that’s not the neighbourhood it once was. Ben is an out-of-work banker who’s refashioning himself as a self-employed personal-finance consultant; his wife, Mary, is holding down the fort with her job as a paralegal, but the stress is taking a toll. In the opening scene, Ben and Mary are having a barbecue with Sharon and Kenny, the younger couple who’ve recently moved in next door. “Who invites their neighbours over for dinner anymore?” Sharon marvels. When Ben replies, “We don’t have any friends,” he doesn’t seem to be kidding. A few minutes later, Sharon reveals that she and Kenny have only recently come out of rehab.

      The characters feel the tenuousness of their circumstances keenly, and as the four develop a friendship, their conventional social interactions take on an increasingly desperate quality. “I’m at the frayed edge of my wits,” Mary confesses at one point; it’s a sentiment shared by all. The play opens with Mary recounting a dream, a trope that recurs as everyone’s grip on reality—and propriety—begins to loosen.

      Director Lois Anderson and her excellent cast find both absurd humour and an ominous undercurrent in the whiplash-inducing tonal shifts in D’Amour’s dialogue. Planning a camping trip, Sharon follows a wrenching description of addiction with a perky “I think the nature’s really gonna help.” Luisa Jojic’s sincere delivery of Sharon’s many outrageous lines is comic gold. When Mary, played on a slow simmer by Jennifer Copping, admits to having been angry about something, Sharon says earnestly, “You see, if you meditated, you’d get those three hours back.” Joel Wirkkunen lets us glimpse the void lurking under Ben’s affability, and the twitchy energy of Aaron Craven’s Kenny is gleefully released in the play’s climax.

      David Roberts’s set gives us down-at-heel suburbia, from the sticky sliding door to the broken patio umbrella. Lighting designer Conor Moore and sound designer Dylan McNulty enhance the mood and craft a convincing late-show surprise.

      Waking up to her shifting reality, Mary says, “I feel another skin below my real skin.” Detroit peels back suburban angst, and in this production, what it finds underneath is never less than riveting.

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