The Approach, Trunk Theatre. Photo supplied.

The Approach (Stage 8, Old Strathcona Performing Arts Centre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

This unsettling, mysteriously intricate play by the Irish playwright/screenwriter Mark O’Rowe, is brought to the Fringe by Trunk Theatre, an Edmonton indie with an archive full of distinguished choices from the international repertoire on both sides of the Atlantic.

The Approach happens entirely at a cafe table: two chairs, two cups of coffee. A third chair hangs over the stage. We meet three women, but only two at a time, in shifting permutations and alliances, in scenes separated by years. Two of them are sisters; all three were roommates in their younger years.

Each scene is an ebb and flow: banal small talk that surges and subsides, bits of memory, gossip, the daily minutiae, the presence or absence of men in their lives. It has the convincing texture and rhythm of real-life coffee conversation in Amy DeFelice’s production, starring the excellent Twilla McLeod, Kendra Connor and Julie Golosky. But, OK, there’s conversational sotto voce and then, (for those of us sitting near the back, at least) downright inaudible. Try to sit close.

And each scene ends with the promise of getting together soon, meet-ups that we feel sure will never happen, as confirmed in the time lapses between scenes.

What emerges, as the scenes unfold, in the tapestry of friendship and love, are betrayals, disappointments, treachery, evasions, lies, grievances (especially a crucial estrangement between the sisters, pivoting on a certain man). Happiness comes and leaks away.  There are inconsistencies and contradictions; there are changes of mind, and nostalgia for what’s been lost. And, disturbingly, their memories start to bleed into each other and mingle. Are all the women somehow on the same loop? Are they somehow co-opting each other’s memories?

This is a play you’ll want to discuss.