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by Rachel Aberle, directed by Patrick McDonald

Green Thumb Theatre, Young People’s Theatre, Toronto

November 22-December 9, 2016

Nina: “Something in you isn’t right

Darkness in you, black as night”

The main benefit of Rachel Aberle’s first play Still/Falling is to bring the topic of teen anxiety and depression out into the open for discussion.  Whether the play is successful as a play is more doubtful.  In the play’s 50 minutes, Aberle spends so much time showing us what is going right for her main character Nina that it is almost impossible to understand how anything could be going wrong.  The play seems merely to stop rather than conclude and it feels as if a second half of how Nina deals with her depression is missing.

The action is set in the consulting room of Nina’s psychotherapist.  Nina (Olivia Hutt) is asked to recount what caused her to seek help and most of Nina’s story is told in flashbacks with occasional recurrence to the present.  As far as we learn, the first distressing event for Nina was when her family moved to Vancouver and Nina had to start at a new high school.  She experiences a panic attack and is unable to enter the new school until another young woman, Kate, welcomes her and takes her in.  Kate happens to be the social maven of the school so that Nina happens to fallen immediately in with the “in” crowd.  Though Nina knows that Kate is extremely judgemental of other people, Nina, contrary to expectations, never loses Kate’s friendship during the course of the show.     

Not only is Nina in with the in girl of the school, the in boy is attracted to her and wants to start going out.  Nina has another panic attack when she and he are at a coffee shop together, Nina imagining that he can see right through her. 

Nina does have an outlet for her feelings since she is a writer.  When Kate corals her into joining a drama club, Nina is terrified since she hates speaking in front of other people.  But as it happens, the club leader exempts her from acting and Nina gains much admiration for supplying scripts for the other to act.  Aberle never gives us an example of these. 

We could easily put down Nina’s first two panic attacks to nerves, but then she has another one when she receives a Christmas gift from her younger brother whom she unkindly calls “The Creep”.  What motivates this is never explained.  Aberle shows us that Nina, despite the almost unrealistic amount of support she has from friends at school, somehow doesn’t feel right.  She has to take breaks to be alone in the women’s washroom.  Sometimes she misses whole classes by being there.  Seemingly out of nowhere she starts thinking of herself as “bad” and “ugly” and feels too unwell to go to school, although nothing is physically wrong.  Eventually, she talks about “punishing” herself but, luckily, is caught by her mother before executing her first act of self-harm. 

Aberle is trying to make us see that what we might dismiss as simple a case of nerves is in fact a warning sign for a more significant problem like anxiety or depression.  Aberle has, however, given Nina such an impossibly perfect life and such a smooth transition to her new school that she fails to help us understand what could possibly be at the root of Nina’s depression.  How is receiving a Christmas gift from her brother in any way like going to a new school for the first time?  Aberle shows us that Nina’s father, a professor of economics, is distant and that her mother whom she calls “Little Mary Sunshine” is almost too optimist to be true.  But Aberle also shows that Nina’s mother immediately drops her

optimistic façade when she notices something is seriously wrong.  Aberle never gives us any idea that Nina is depressed because she is misunderstood or thwarted by her parents, and she is the one who is unkind to her brother, not the other way around. 

It is all very well that Aberle wants to keep the causes of Nina’s depression a mystery to her, but they should not also be a mystery to us.  Aberle should help us to see a pattern similar to what her therapist will help her to see.  Aberle may be trying to show us that Nina is suffering from endogenous depression, but unfortunately that concept is never raised.  The the play ends abruptly just when the therapy would begin.  All Aberle has shown us is a series of social successes for Nina interspersed with a series of worsening episodes of self-loathing without giving us anything to connect the two.  Failing to give us any insight into the main character results in our becoming disengaged from her and not really interested in her story – rather the opposite effect of what the playwright is trying to achieve. 

If the play’s main flaw is the disconnectedness of the narrative, its secondary flaw is it portrayal of therapy.  Nina describes her therapist as calm and perfectly dressed.  Nina complains that the therapist asks questions whose answers should be obvious.  This is all we get.  Many people are extremely reluctant to see psychotherapists.  It can be felt as a blow to the ego and a sign of failed will-power.  For Aberle to give us no positive view of the therapist will hardly encourage anyone to see one.  If only Aberle’s play went on longer to show that Nina receives some benefit from the interaction, or if Aberle provided a postscript where Nina acknowledges that her therapy helps in some measure, she could help remove the stigma that people feel about entering into therapy.

The strong performance of Olivia Hutt goes a long way toward redeeming the play although it would have even more impact if Aberle bothered to provide some insight into Nina’s character.  Aberle really gives no clue at all what Nina is like as a person, except that she has periods of anxiety and depression, and thus falls into the trap of having Nina’s disease define her.  Hutt shows her wide range by playing all the other characters, male and female, and keeping them all distinct in voice in gesture.  Particularly memorable is Hutt’s impression  of the distracted nature of Nina’s father and of the slow-wittedness of Kate’s friend Ash. 

Ken MacDonald’s set of stage-high series of white drawers with a a chair and table on them poised at 90º to the floor promises much but turns out to be related very little to Aberle’s play.  Nina’s life as Aberle depicts it is hardly a set of secrets.  If there are any important secrets then Aberle has neglected to even to hint at what they might be.  Cameron Fraser’s video projections help to create a mood of unreality that is especially effective in setting Nina’s periods of anxiety and depression apart from her otherwise “normal” life. 

If Still/Falling is used, as it seems to be, as a springboard for educators to discuss the topic of teens and mental health, that is all very good.  The exercise, however, would be much more useful if Still/Falling were actually an involving play with a central character we could at least partially understand.  If Aberle really wants to help people with depression or people who have friends with depression, she should not present it as a mystery condition that drops in out of the blue with no relation to everyday life.  And she definitely should not stop the action before she shows us that there are positive ways out of depression of which therapy is one of the most important.    

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive. 

Photos: Olivia Hutt as Nina; Olivia Hutt as Nina. ©2015 Moonrider Productions.

For tickets, visit www.youngpeoplestheatre.ca.