Review: DETROIT at Coal Mine Theatre

"Isn't it funny how nothing ever happens?" That line from Lisa D'Amour's DETROIT, now playing at the Coal Mine Theatre, could be the motto for its portrayal of suburban ennui. Mary (Diana Bentley) and Ben (Sergio Di Zio) are stuck in a suburb that once was planned to promote community and gathering, but now throws up impenetrable walls between neighbours as it dances an uneasy tango between gentrification and dilapidation.

Ben has recently been laid off from his job as a bank loan officer; worrying about his own financial future and living off severance pay, he puts his hopes into building a website to advertise his new financial planning business. Mary, a paralegal who lives at the corner of desperation and boredom, self-medicates with alcohol. Their lives are upended when a couple of recovering addicts, Kenny (Craig Lauzon) and Sharon (Louise Lambert), move in next door, the freewheeling duo instantly promising stimulation and escape. D'Amour's sharp script and the cast's committed performances make this show feel vital and present - like, perhaps, something is happening after all.

Detroit reads both as a cultural artifact of 2010, hot off the heels of the 2008 recession, and as timely as ever in our current moment of financial instability and social dislocation. In fact, with years of COVID under our belts, the act of sitting in a theatre with other people still feeling staggeringly new, one keenly feels the couples' admission that they don't have any friends, and their intense eagerness to finally socialize in each other's backyards.

Effective set design (Ken MacDonald) gives us a realistic forestage with two very different spaces, Sharon and Kenny's unfinished porch, rusted metal table and trash pile contrasting with Mary and Ben's matching patio furniture, fancier grill, and chic fairy lights. The smell and sight of meat being grilled onstage is a subtly showy bit of stage magic that adds realism to the cookout scenes.

In the background, the framework of both houses appears as an abstracted silhouette, making the homes seem simultaneously real and insubstantial. The set is one of many indicators that cleverly emphasize the economic and class disparity between the couples, aided by props such as plates of hors d'oeuvres that clearly aspire to different worlds, costumes (Melanie McNeill) such as Sharon's never-ending one-shoulder graphic tees, and script cues like Kenny and Sharon's comparative coarseness of speech.

At the same time, the precariousness of the veneer of success is on clear display. Ben and Mary may have the furniture that Kenny and Sharon lack, but it's either disliked, like the coffee table Mary alarmingly swiftly presents to Sharon as a housewarming gift to get it out of the house, or easily breakable, like a patio umbrella that refuses to stay open. In a terrific bit of physical comedy, Ben and Mary war with their sliding glass door, which constantly sticks at the halfway point.

The script is full of such metaphors, from a Plantar wart that grows unnoticed upward through flesh until it becomes unbearable (but only if you walk a certain way) to various extended explanations of dreams. D'Amour's writing is a cornucopia of social awkwardness, particularly at the start, and the dialogue feels natural and real. As the couples grow closer and more intertwined, she plays up the contrast between social niceties and reality, showing us how quickly conversations explode into seething resentments or desperate pleas for affection. She also weaves together the couples' fragile connections and attractions to each other in moments of vulnerability and hope; a scene where Sharon begs Mary to consider their value equal as human beings is heartbreaking.

The acting in DETROIT is top-notch. Director Jill Harper ably handles the small space, with Matt Richardson managing effective fight choreography in a way that feels realistic but not in danger of spilling out into the audience. Di Zio's Ben walks around with an eager, pole-axed look, like he's never seen fun in his life and he doesn't quite know what to do with it. As Mary, Bentley is alternately wounded and wounding; her scenes with Lambert are electrically-charged, using their height difference to great advantage.

Lambert herself feels like the show's focal point, her brassiness and acceptance of herself as "white trash" hiding a fire burning her up from the inside. Finally, Lauzon shines in a speech to Ben trying to convince him that they should treat themselves a boy's night out, which is so clearly tinged with past regret and trauma that it goes on far past any sense. It all adds up to an enormous question: who deserves what? What are we owed from life, and does that change based on the choices - or mistakes - we make? A monologue about the neighbourhood's past, ably delivered by Eric Peterson, is saturated with notes of 1960s hope and nostalgia that feel bitter now in retrospect.

DETROIT shows the looming darkness behind the bright white of the proverbial picket fence. Later on in the play, Kenny tells Ben, "You gotta hang on to that house...Don't let anyone take it from you." In a city where home ownership seems like a dream to anyone under 45, particularly those who work in the arts, this show brings the house down.

Photo by Dahlia Katz

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