World on Fire
Photo by Marianne Sawchuk
World on Fire Theatre Collective/World on Fire written and directed by George F. Walker, Assembly Theatre, closes June 7.
George F. Walker is one of Canada’s most prolific and, I would say, one of our most important playwrights, so a world premiere is something to be noticed.
Born in a working-class East End Toronto neighbourhood, Walker has never forgotten his roots. When I go to a George F. Walker play, I know I am going to encounter the mean streets—not in the sense of crime-ridden urban landscapes, but the lives of people pushed to the margins. His plays have long focused on those whom society overlooks, neglects, or fails. In this case, the marginalized are people struggling with mental health issues.
The promotional synopsis of World on Fire neatly sketches the players: Annie has been on the streets since she was 13 (Marline Van); David’s parents tried to include him in their suicide pact (David Huband); Marius does not trust traffic lights (Chris Patterson); Casey preaches social justice outside shopping malls (Anne van Leeuwen) Then there is Dr. Emilio, a charming physician with a prescription pad always at the ready (Alex Clay), and Jules, the social worker who is trying to save them all just by being kind (Elizabeth Friesen).
The tagline concludes with a pointed caveat: “And it might not be working.” It is an intriguing setup, promising both humour and heartbreak while hinting at larger questions about how society responds to those who are struggling.
Walker employs an interesting device throughout the play. He breaks the fourth wall almost immediately. Alone onstage in the opening scene, Annie looks directly at the audience and tells us that she has been on the streets since she was 13, adding words to the effect that no one noticed and no one seemed to care. From that moment onward, the audience is never allowed the comfort of remaining detached observers.
Jules, the social worker, repeatedly addresses us directly, describing her clients, their histories, and her attempts to help them.
At first these interruptions seem merely a storytelling device, but it soon becomes apparent that Walker has something more pointed in mind.
By continually drawing the audience into the action, he implicates us in what is happening onstage. We come to represent the wider public—the people who walk past, look away, and either fail to notice those who are suffering, or are uncomfortable or embarrassed by what they see. In that sense, the audience becomes a character in the play. It is a deliberate and effective strategy, one that transforms World on Fire from just a drama about mental illness into a challenge directed at society at large.
Medication
World on Fire
There is always humour in a George F. Walker play, no matter how bleak the circumstances, and World on Fire is no exception. As we come to know the four clients better, their encounters with Jules and with one another become unexpectedly funny, even as their stories grow increasingly heartbreaking.
Annie is the most combative and angry of the group, but she also seems the smartest. Of all four, she appears to have the clearest understanding of what is really happening around her and the strongest grasp on reality. Her observations often cut through the surrounding confusion with remarkable clarity, including her own self awareness regarding her pregnancy.
Casey, the self-styled activist who spends her days preaching social justice, has had her two sons taken away and is living in a tent encampment. Her backstory is devastating. It involves human trafficking that would break most people. Tightly wound and perpetually on edge, she is nevertheless the client to whom Jules seems most emotionally attached, perhaps because they share a history.
David is uber needy and Marius borders on the ridiculous and both serve the function of comic relief, but Walker never loses compassion for either.
The one significant weakness in the play is Dr. Emilio. Walker’s sympathies and frustrations are so clearly aligned elsewhere that the character never achieves the complexity of the others. As a physician, he is presented as someone who sees medication as the answer to virtually every problem, He lacks genuine understanding of the people he is treating, and repeatedly fails to appreciate either their circumstances or the efforts of Jules, the social worker trying to help them.
It is clear that Walker is using the character to critique what he sees as the medical profession’s approach to mental illness, particularly an over-reliance on medication and a failure to engage with the human realities underlying psychological distress. The problem is that Dr. Emilio never feels as fully developed as the other characters. While Annie, Casey, Marius, David and even Jules emerge as complicated, contradictory, and deeply human figures, Dr. Emilio functions more as an embodiment of an argument.
As a result, he becomes the least convincing figure in the play. At times he feels almost cartoonish, a target rather than a character.
Mental illness also appears to have become Walker’s latest preoccupation. His previous play, Syndrome, written for younger audiences, likewise dealt with mental health issues, examining the pressures and struggles facing teenagers. Seen alongside that work, World on Fire feels very much like part of an ongoing exploration of a subject that clearly matters deeply to the playwright.
Whatever reservations I may have about Dr. Emilio, I found World on Fire consistently absorbing. The characters are the play’s greatest strength. They are vivid, eccentric, damaged, and impossible to dismiss. I am, admittedly, a Walker admirer. As a writer, he remains one of the most compelling voices in Canadian theatre, and his ability to create memorable characters has not diminished.
Logo
World on Fire
The production itself serves the material effectively. Fabiana Mercurio’s costumes immediately establish who these people are and the set design by Madeleine and Daniel Rosenberg and Friesen is deceptively simple. The playing area is largely defined by chairs, but behind them is a striking series of abstract pictures suggesting faces, heads, and perhaps even fractured states of mind. The artwork creates an appropriately unsettling visual environment without distracting from the performances.
The production is presented in the intimate Assembly Theatre, a venue well suited to Walker’s direct, confrontational style and the play’s repeated breaking of the fourth wall. There is very little distance between performer and spectator, which only reinforces Walker’s determination to implicate the audience in what we are witnessing.
Walker has directed his own plays for decades, a practice that has occasionally drawn criticism from those who feel another director might bring a different perspective. There is some truth to that observation. A playwright-director inevitably shapes the material according to the emphases he wishes to make. Yet Walker knows his work better than anyone else, and World on Fire reflects a clear and deliberate vision. The points he wants to make are unmistakable.
In the end, World on Fire is undeniably a message play. Walker succeeds in making us look directly at people society would often prefer not to see. For that reason alone, it is a world premiere worth noticing.