Fetch (Stage 5, Acacia Hall)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Two women, in identical dresses, stand before us with identical cardboard boxes in this unnerving, tightly wound little 2018 thriller by the Edmonton playwright Cat Walsh, whose muse runs to dark unnerving comedy.

They are both Hannah Morgan. And both Hannah Morgans (Abby Krushel and Shyanne Duquette) have a lot to say, about their family, and their last-ever family vacation to a Florida theme park. Are they mirror images? Alternate versions of Hannah Morgan? Alter-egos? In alternate realities? And what, exactly, is hidden in the box?

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That is a mystery, set intriguingly forth by Steven Sobolewski’s production. One Hannah Morgan is an only child; one is the youngest of a passel of siblings. Their memories of childhood and family life, and intertwined accounts of that fatal trip, have jarring discrepancies, too. And there’s this ominous observation passed on by one of them: “all accidents are surprises but not all surprises are accidents.”

Both Hannah Morgans at six were precocious children — the actors are excellent at this kid capture — but, eerily, in slightly different ways. One (Krushel, who never stops beaming) is consumed by her dream of being an amateur crime photographer; she has a macabre obsession with gory crashes and terrible injuries, as an antidote to “my dull boring yawn of a life.” Duquette’s Hannah Morgan, equally morbid, is more of a skeptic and conspiracy theorist, an eye-roller more directly complicit with the audience. “Children are very very easy to lie to,” she says.

And everywhere the Hannah Morgans go, somehow a small stuffed dog named Mr. Anderson, a favourite childhood companion, pursues them, past childhood into adulthood, relentlessly. This cunning, intricate little play turns the puzzle of identity into a kind of horror story, where the past keeps showing up in the present. You don’t say Fetch! or Heel! to a memory (try it, and you’ll see for yourself). Memories fetch themselves. It’s a scary thought.