Thursday, June 09, 2011

Jill Daum

Back in April my wife Rosemary and I attended a Tarragon Theatre production at the Revue Stage (Arts Club Theatre on Granville Island) of Another Home Invasion. The play was brutally realistic and it was very close to what may be in store for my Rosemary and I in the next few years as we both push 70. At one point my wife whispered in my ear, "Do we need this right now in our life?”

It seems that the folks of the Arts Club Theatre want to lure us into comfortable seats and then lambast us with stuff that makes us unsettled. I am not complaining as theatre and most art should challenge.

You might have thought that a semi musical, Mom's the Word: Remixed featuring 5 women who play mothers and wives and is supposed to be funny (and it is) would be a comfortable play to experience. It wasn’t!

This time around Rosemary and I suffered being reminded what it was to have children and raise them. And the reminder hit home as our daughter Hilary is coping with a 9 year-old daughter who is stubborn and with a 13 year-old going on 16 who is ample proof that history’s dark ages are manifested in small ways by teenagers at the brick wall that age 13 seems to be.

But all in all the play moved right along. The play included a figurative childbirth virtuoso performance by Jill Daum. We laughed lots with five very good actresses (Jill Daum, one of five would correct me and tell me, “We are actors.”). The other “actors” are Beverley Elliot, Alison Kelly, Barbara Pollard and Deborah Williams who scared the hell out of me as she reminded me of my boot camp corporal in the Argentine Navy.

As I consider if I should buy a couple of tickets and send our daughter and our older granddaughter I also think about the fact that I met Jill Daum sometime in 1978 and that she has come a long way since she posed for me on her red sofa. I have no idea what she did with her life after but I do know that since Mom’s the Word 2: Unhinged premiered in 2005, Jill Daum has cooked 4,380 meals, washed 2,920 loads of laundry, spent 832 hours in the car going to and from soccer, forked out $8,000 on math tutors, walked 2,170 kilometers exercising the dog, picked up 1,664 dog poohs, screwed up 15 times really badly, and is grateful for all 1,460 days.

Mom's the Word: Remixed, written by The Mom's the Word Collective,  features original direction by Wayne Harrison and runs at the Revue Stage on Granville Island until July 23.

Warning! Nudity and foul language (really!).