Review: GIRLS UNWANTED at The King Black Box

It is a terrible feeling, not to be wanted.

It comes in many forms, each one its own type of exquisitely agonizing rejection. The job application or the one to the program that could define your future, thrown out, perhaps unanswered. The child forced to walk behind their two closer friends when there’s not enough room on the sidewalk. The feeling of being found wanting for the simple quality of being yourself, relatives and supposed friends turning away, or of being judged inadequate and dismissed out of hand before you’ve even been met.. The romantic brush-off. The birthday party attended only by the celebrant.

In research into homeless populations, studies have shown that the loneliness of homelessness is like an ouroboros of mental illness: while we often blame homelessness on mental illness, it’s as likely to be the cause of mental illness as the result. There’s only so many times you can ask for help, only to be treated with derision or as if you’re invisible, for the doubt and pain to creep in.

Playwright George F. Walker, who also directed his work GIRLS UNWANTED, is no stranger to profiling individuals on the edge of society and on the edge of loneliness. His current exploration of resilience and despair, set in a women’s halfway house, has been given an urgent production at the King Black Box, the small space of the new theatre company immersing viewers in the world of the unwanted.

Sophie Ann Rooney’s set comes pre-distressed, indicating the numbers of women who have likely crashed through the house’s halls. The set, looking like a dorm common area, teems with piles of unplayed games, a beat-up couch, and a bulletin board with telling, on-point headlines like “Parkdale Man Killed Connected to Downtown Halfway House” and “Emergency Shelter for Vulnerable Women at Capacity Just Months After Opening,” as well as an advertisement for Thelma and Louise movie night.

The house’s residents drift in and out of the living room with varying levels of confidence and ownership of the space. Tough-talking Kat (Alexandra Flores-Matic) was given up by her parents at birth, and has wandered through the cracks in the system ever since, projecting a “don’t touch me” attitude and committing minor crimes to stay afloat. Would-be queen bee Hanna’s (Ziggy Schulting) psychosexual obsession with rejection from a friend resulted in a violent incident. And strung-out Ash (Marline Yan) has a past, involving kidnapping and rape, that’s too brutal to be fully described, giving the young, dazed-looking woman a taste for arson and a history of institutionalization. All of them are supposedly being readied for independent life by world-weary Maddy (L.A. Sweeney), the den mother who is herself a graduate of a similar school of hard knocks.

The action kicks off with a bookended appearance and disappearance of two men: first, Kat’s sensitive younger brother Max (Louis Akins), who was actually raised by their parents when they were “ready” for children, has finally tracked down his missing older sister and is desperately looking for some kind of communion. Though his home life has been more stable, it's not by that much, and Akins radiates a kind of quiet loneliness as he subtly takes up residence as a quasi-house butler, unwilling to head home despite this environment’s dysfunction.

Second, the actual house caretaker, Victor, has gone missing, and it’s hinted that his increasingly unprofessional behaviour with the young women means he won’t be missed. However, this also puts his charges under suspicion, meaning that they now need to interact with the justice system—something that, given their histories, breeds panic and backstabbing.

Walker’s works are always filled with intriguing characters hurling sharp barbs in each other’s direction, and GIRLS UNLIMITED is no different. Each of the residents is multifaceted, surprising and distinct. At the same time, they’ve all had to grow up too fast, even at birth. They’ve all been failed over and over again, by parents, friends, the police, men, and even themselves, each having some part in her own destruction.

They’re also all unsure of where to go next, and whether there’s anything left for them once they finally leave the house; it may not be ideal, and they may be at each other’s throats more than half the time, but the world outside appears a void, lacking any real promise. Even Max’s offer to Kat of a family after all these years comes with caveats, and the young woman’s internal war as she wonders if it’s too little, too late is heartbreaking to watch. It’s also fascinating to see alliances form and crumble within the volatile community, especially once it appears that one member of the halfway house might be on her way to the big house. Most of the violence is psychological, but occasionally clashes turn physical, with fine choreographed tension between Flores-Matic and Schulting.

Walker’s 90-minute script’s strengths lie in its in-depth psychological profiles of the characters, as well as telling us just enough about these women’s pasts to explain who they are while leaving us intrigued and not overwhelmed. At the same time, the sketchy details make the mind work overtime, creating a larger horror than could be described.

Not every aspect of the script avoids excess. Perhaps a little too much time spent in lovingly vitriolic exchanges between Kat and Hanna that tread the same ground; while they may be true to life, there’s only so many times you can hear women accuse each other of being sluts before it’s tiresome, even if at first it’s an interesting reflection into a character who’s classically projecting and deflecting her own perceived failings onto another. As well, Ash’s character sometimes teeters on the brink of cliché, and it’s a credit to Yan’s expressively deadened portrayal that she doesn’t wind up feeling either melodramatic or like a victim-of-the-week on a hospital drama.

Luckily, Walker has larger points to make than most disposable “tragedy porn” fare, such as thoughtful, succinct statements about the necessity of human connection, and the importance of finding something to cling to rather than being completely adrift in a sea of nothing.

Because more than pain or jail or starvation, it’s nothingness that these characters fear: being cast aside in the pits of despair, uncared for, unacknowledged, unremembered.

Unwanted.

Photo of Alexandra Flores-Matic and L.A. Sweeney by Jules Sherwood

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