Your Side, My Side and the Truth, presented at SummerWorks, is interesting piece of ensemble work where people in their prolonged 20’s try to figure out their lives, loves and losses. The play uses narration to move through the intertwining stories of five youngish girls and guys who are just trying to figure out who they are.
It might sound like the stuff of overplayed quarter life crisis, but it really isn’t. This play really grabbed me and held me for the full seventy five minutes at The Scotiabank Studio theatre.
For the first while I thought the show might take place in the 90’s, which I loved. It has a heavily 90’s influenced soundtrack -it begins with a Pixie’s song that I remember buying the tape for (it was a single tape with a B-side no less) and everyone has a good pot smoking intellectualizing 90’s angst about them (ashtanga yoga and acoustic guitar anyone?) which had me in a Reality Bites/Singles kind of moment. Then they all took out their iPhones. The phones were used so well in the show that I didn’t mind getting pulled out of the nostalgia.
Rebecca Auerbach leads the cast – she plays a woman who falls in love with a stuttering, insecure Sci-Fi geek who loves her instantly (played by Jeff Gladstone). She’s not so sure though. Then we meet an adopted brother and sister who secretly long for each other as they try to find themselves (Taylor Trowbridge and Michael Kash). Rounding out the piece is the concussion suffering, “unattachment” seeking yogi (played by Tova Smith) who makes more sense as the story ultimately unravels.
The love and loss in this piece are underlined with lots of humour through the everydayness of their lives and I think that’s why it resonated so much for me. The play felt like the memory of something that happened about 10 years ago and only after watching did I read that this is actually the case. Auerbach wrote the script inspired by her own life.
The frenzy, fun and confusion of youth is there. The characters trade backpacking stories, talk about life, and strum acoustic guitars. If they aren’t drinking, they are smoking weed and if they aren’t doing that, they are snorting lines of coke or popping ecstasy. Drugs are a casual expectation in this life but as the story unravels it is evident that they are the catalyst for loss.
The excellent cast feels seamless here – narrating each other’s stories as they sing, kiss, fuck, massage and laugh. For a short amount of time you are pulled into their world with all of its joy and confusion and, ultimately, grief.
Details:
- Your Side, My Side, And the Truth plays at Scotiabank Studio at Pia Bouman (6 Noble Street)
- Tues. August 14, 7:30 PM, Sat. August 18, 10:00 PM, Sun. August 12, 5:00 PM, Sun. August 19, 7:30 P
- All individual SummerWorks tickets are $15 at the door (cash only). Tickets are available online at http://ticketwise.ca, By phone by calling the Lower Ossington Box Office at 416-915-6747, in person at the Lower Ossington Box Office (located at 100A Ossington Avenue) Mon. – Sun. 12PM-7PM (Advance tickets are $15 + service fee)
- Several money-saving passes are available if you plan to see at least 3 shows