Jake Planinc has been dreaming of this moment for 10 years. Ever since the Matchstick Theatre artistic director picked up David French’s Leaving Home as an undergrad at Mount Allison University, he’s thought of ways to stage it. How the lighting would look; how the script—which follows the Mercer family on one fateful day in Toronto—has held up since the play’s 1972 premiere; what his actors would wear.
From now until the end of March, Planinc and his Matchstick colleagues are running the Canadian family drama at Barrington Street’s Breaking Circus. And while the show run marks a long-awaited return to Halifax, it’s also staged like never before.
‘It’s really a work of art’
Set in large part over the course of a family dinner, French’s Leaving Home portrays a day in the life of the Mercers—Newfoundlanders who have left home to resettle in Toronto. The family patriarch, Jacob, misses the way things used to be. His teenage sons, Bill and Ben, have big changes of their own: The younger son, Bill, is expecting a baby and has plans for a shotgun wedding with his girlfriend; while the elder son, Ben, wants to move out of the house.
The play—debuted at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre in 1972—was French’s first. It was hailed as a Canadian peer to the coming-of-age tales of Tennessee Williams and Arthur Miller.
“The play is so beautifully crafted,” Planinc says, speaking by phone with The Coast. What’s really at the heart of the play, he adds, is “identity—how we are and are not our parents.
“One of the beautiful things about this play to me is that it happens in real time: It’s a straight shot through an hour and a half of this family’s life. But in that hour and a half, you get a lot of recollection of the past, and you hear a lot about the intergenerational relationships that have come before—and then there’s a lot of projection into the future as well.
“It’s really a work of art,” Planinc adds.
Theatre in the round adds twist to Canadian classic
One difference in Matchstick’s approach to Leaving Home? Unlike a traditional theatre, with a stage and audience in their usual top-down arrangement, Planinc and his peers are staging Leaving Home in a so-called “theatre in the round” approach, where the cast are at the centre and the audience surrounds them. That opens some interesting possibilities, Planinc says.
“Every seat is front row,” he tells The Coast.
“Think of it like a boxing ring, almost. It’s extremely intimate. You get the detailed looks at performances like you wouldn’t in any other space in the city. And we’re very lucky to be in Breaking Circus’s incredibly beautiful venue.”
The show premiered last Friday, Mar. 22. It’s on until Sunday, Mar. 31. Tickets are $30 and available on Matchstick Theatre’s website.
