Review: FAMILY at Shaking the Tree

Violence creates monsters, monsters create violence, and the cycle goes on. That's the idea at the core of Celine Song's FAMILY, a highly disturbing and also darkly comedic play now running at Shaking the Tree.

Before the show, I had a very brief conversation with Samantha Van Der Merwe, Shaking the Tree's artistic director and the director of FAMILY, about what kind of theatre people would want to see post-pandemic. My take is that it either has to be totally frivolous, like the follies that were popular during and after the World Wars, or totally devastating -- nothing lukewarm will tempt people away from Netflix. FAMILY is just about as different from follies as you can get.

The play opens on three half-siblings -- Alice, Linus, and David -- in the living room of the house where they grew up immediately following their father's funeral. As is common in Shaking the Tree productions, the actors are already on stage when you walk into the theatre: Linus (played by Blake Stone) gloomily slumped in an armchair, David (Kai Hynes) trying to take up as little space as possible and grinning in an unsettling way, and Alice (Rebby Yuer Foster) in the center, staring piercingly at the audience.

Van Der Merwe's set is a striking combination of beauty and decay. The floor is angled toward the audience, and you get the terrifying sense that the action might jump off the stage right into your lap. The walls are strewn with flowers, but you get the feeling that they might not smell as sweet as they look. Indeed, as the play unfolds, the siblings start to hear, smell, see, and taste terrible things as they discover, or, perhaps it's more accurate to say that they acknowledge, the violence that has happened in the house and its impact on all of them. There aren't really spoiler alerts to worry about, but let's just say that their father was not a good man.

I won't pretend that I understood all of FAMILY because I definitely didn't. It's bizarre. But I'm not sure the play was intended to be understood, at least not on an intellectual level. As the family's secrets come to light and the characters start to act and interact in increasingly unsettling ways, what's happening on the stage becomes more surreal -- eventually, words lose their meaning entirely and all you're left with is an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of your stomach. At the same time, FAMILY is a sort-of comedy, and the discomfort is punctuated by truly funny lines (usually delivered by Foster) that make you laugh and then immediately feel conflicted about it.

Just to be clear -- I thought FAMILY was pretty brilliant. I didn't get it entirely, and I was uncomfortable most of the time, but I reveled in it because it's the type of experience that only live theatre can provide. There's no changing the channel or looking at your phone or talking to someone to relieve the tension. You sit there, you take it all in, you feel it, and then, if you're lucky, you get to unpack it all with a companion on the way home (and likely for several days after).

FAMILY is not for everyone, and you might want to think twice about going with actual members of your family. But if, like me, you like theatre that's messy and confrontational and uncomfortable and more than a little weird, you should definitely check it out.

FAMILY runs through November 6 at Shaking the Tree. As with most shows at this excellent theatre, it will probably sell out, so make your plans to see it now. More details and tickets here: https://www.shaking-the-tree.com/family.html

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