REVIEW: Where You Are is a good place to be

The Players’ Guild’s latest offering is a cozy, funny ‘visit with dear friends’ featuring a likable cast, a witty and well-paced script by Hamilton’s Kristen Da Silva, and a front porch set that has our writer yearning for a place to join the conversation.

Sitting in the dark at The Players’ Guild as Where You Are was being performed onstage, I felt as though I was part of a “live studio audience” watching a lovely, funny, cozy sitcom episode. Entering the final weekend of its run tomorrow through Saturday evening, Where You Are has a likable four-member cast that is easy to root for and share some laughs. As director Diane Brokenshire says, “Get comfy and join us on a trip that feels like a long overdue visit with dear friends.”

In the play, sisters Glenda and Suzanne have lived together in a cottage on Manitoulin Island for 30-odd years, ever since Suzanne, alone and pregnant, moved in with Glenda and her late husband Mark. The sisters’ personalities are wildly different, yet they get along well and their days are filled with banter, teasing, and laughter. They keep up-to-date with local gossip and have been getting to know their charming younger neighbour Patrick. Suzanne’s daughter Beth is about to arrive for a visit, taking time out from building her career as a big-city doctor. Mother and daughter, however, have a complicated relationship and clash almost constantly. There are many life changes Beth has been keeping close to her chest, unwilling to bear her mother’s meddling. For their part, Glenda and Suzanne are trying to decide when to share some particularly heavy news. When all is revealed, there are some big decisions to be made. Where You Are balances the imperfections and painful bits of being human with the life-affirming power of humour, support of family, and possibility of new beginnings. Brokenshire says, “Where You Are is a contemplative yet very funny look at love, loss, relationships and the strength of the ties that bind.”

Kristen Da Silva is the playwright, as well as an actor and director who was born in Oakville, grew up in Nobleton, Ont., and now makes Hamilton home.

She started her writing career in 2014, and Where You Are was first produced by Theatre Orangeville in 2019. It has subsequently been translated into four languages and staged across North America and in Europe. Her other plays include Hurry Hard; Beyond the Sea; The Rules of Playing Risk; Book Club; By The Light of a Story; Jacques Lake; The Bluff; Gibson & Son; Five Alarm; and Sugar Road. In fairly short order, Da Silva has become quite prolific and popular among Canadian playwrights for her character-driven comedies.

She is a two-time recipient of the Playwrights Guild New Comedy award, first for Gibson & Sons (2016) and again for Hurry Hard (2019). It makes sense, then, that Da Silva counts the also exceedingly popular and prolific Canadian playwright Norm Foster as a mentor and a fan, one who hails Where You Are as both “laugh-out-loud funny and as warm as an August evening.” Foster has called Da Silva “a wonderful dramatist.”

It’s easy-going theatre, but not pure escapism. It has wit, good pacing, and a gentle heart behind its story arc. Where You Are may not have any great epiphanies in store, but it will leave audiences better than it found them in bringing them laughter and a smidgen of hope, ending as it does on a loving, optimistic note.

Barbara Fisher (Glenda) and Martha Christianson (Suzanne) set the mood early, bringing a charm and likability to two very different sisters. We feel like we’re among old friends before Act 1 has even reached the mid-way point. Glenda is an early-riser, a nurturing and warm person who, it turns out, makes the most delectable jams on the island. Suzanne is a late riser, a Sex in the City meets Manitoulin Island kind of gal; store-bought coffee cake is her specialty but she’s not afraid to flirt with Patrick. Christianson brings a kind of quirky quality to Suzanne that puts me in mind of the eccentric delivery of Schitt's Creek’s Alexis or Moira Rose. Everyone deserves a friend or auntie like Fisher’s Glenda. We’re happily listening in on their banter when first Patrick and then Beth show up to the cottage.

And The Players’ Guild sure knows how to design a porch set. From The Savannah Sipping Society to Where You Are, the sturdy and attractive porches on the Guild stage always have me choosing a seat from which I could see myself joining in on the conversation. The cast members each have the storytelling knack that allows them to use the script to clearly evoke other places and spaces, be it the local church, Mark’s old shed, Patrick’s ex-fiancee’s chaotic wedding reception, or Beth’s car.

Stephanie Christiaens (Beth) and Aleks Ristic (Patrick) each navigate some tricky character work with aplomb. We know that Beth and Suzanne have an uneasy relationship before we even meet Beth, and Christiaens manages to show that, yes, maybe Beth is a little “uptight” and more conservative than her mother, but there may be good reasons as to why she doesn’t want to confide everything she’s been going through. Eventually, Beth’s sense of fun starts to reveal itself when she accompanies Patrick to a wedding, reflecting that we all have different sides to ourselves that only need an opportunity (or accomplice) to flourish. Ristic embodies Patrick with an earnestness and adaptability that shows that although he has come through a difficult time in his life and is unsure what’s next, he retains enough optimism to keep going and stay open to new possibilities.

If you enjoy this play, look out for Theatre Burlington’s production of Hurry Hard, another play by Da Silva, opening April 17, as well as Theatre Aquarius's production of her play Sisters of 78 in the early fall.

As for The Players’ Guild, coming up next is Clarence Darrow, a one-man show by David W. Rintels about the life and career of the famous defense attorney on April 10-12, and A Grand Night for Singing, the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical revue on stage May 29 through June 13.

NEED TO KNOW

Where You Are
Continues March 26, 27 & 28, 8 p.m. and March 28, 2 p.m.
The Players’ Guild
80 Queen St. S., Hamilton
Box office: (905) 529-0284 or playersguild.org
Run time: 2 hours including a 20-minute intermission