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by Rebecca Northan, directed by Kevin Kruchkywich

Here For Now Theatre Company, Here For Now Theatre, 24 St. Andrew Street, Stratford

May 30-June 8, 2025

Rachel: “I don’t want to supersede her”

Here For Now Theatre Company has opened its new indoor theatre in the former Land Registry Office at 24 St. Andrew Street with the world premiere of Stick Around by Rebecca Northan. This is an auspicious opening that shows Here For Now intends to carry on its minimalist aesthetic and its emphasis on actors and new writing in its new space. Northan’s play, a non-improvised piece, is both funny and moving. Excellent performances and fluid direction make for an intimate and inspiring experience.

Stick Around begins with Chantelle Han as Rachel looking at herself in an invisible mirror and judging what she sees. She asks the audience directly if we are a “butt” or “bum” audience. On opening night it was “butt” audience. She then proceeds to tell us that she has her mother’s butt. She says she also has her mother’s hands but she seems more focussed on her posterior. As we learn, she is going to turn 46 tomorrow. This is a particularly anxious moment for her because her mother died at age 45, and, as she says, “I don’t want to supersede her”. She also tells us that, in a theoretical way, she has considered suicide.

What the play shows us is a young woman who has the opposite of an Electra complex. Northan gives us the portrait of a woman who takes great pains not to obliterate her mother. In fact, the question she has is how to preserve her mother’s memory and yet find the courage to continue living her own life into the post-age 45 period for which her mother can provide no example.

To show us her dilemma, Rachel takes us back to the time when her mother’s immanent death became a reality. This occurred when her mother, Marge, visited the doctor to have a lump on her rib examined. It turned out to be one of many malignant metastases in different parts of her body. The doctor gave Rachel’s mother only eight weeks to live. How Rachel and her mother coped during those eight weeks is the main subject of the play. The play is so full of detail, you may wonder whether it is based on a real incident. The programme says it clearly: “Stick Around is a mildly fictionalized account of Rebecca’s last eight weeks with her mom following a diagnosis of terminal cancer”.

Contrary to what one might expect from such a topic, Stick Around is full of laughter. Marge is a tough woman who worked her way up from secretary to CEO of Roto-Rooter in Calgary. She approaches the world with mordant humour. Marge tells Rachel that she has no time to be a feminist and in the midst of seeing the doctor, a lawyer and a mortician, is always ready to comment on the physical attributes of the men as if trying to make sure her stay-at-home daughter is set up with a guy before Marge dies.

Marge is also someone who is unashamed about shopping around for the lowest price on any goods or services. Most amusingly we see her do this, much to Rachel’s embarrassment with a patio set and, later on, for a casket.

All this is not to say that Marge and Rachel are unaware of the unfairness of Marge’s early death. Indeed, they both are only too aware of it. But the personalities of both mother and daughter are such that they can’t fail to laugh at absurdity wherever they find it.

Kevin Kruchkywich has given the play exactly the right pace. Chantelle Han makes Rachel a funny and engaging figure. Han is able to switch between direct address to the audience and the action of the play easily and naturally, clearly separating Rachel as narrator and commentator from Rachel as character. Han presents Rachel as someone who has a satirical point of view towards everything, with herself as its prime object. Even grief over her mother’s passing cannot disguise her loving satire of her mother’s more unusual character traits.

Daniela Vlaskalic gives a wonderful performance as Marge. She shows a strong woman who appears resolutely unsentimental. Marge’s pet name for Rachel is “Brat”, even up to the end. If Marge notices something foolish, she points it out. Marge constantly chides Rachel’s cruder word choices with the rebuke “Language”, even though she feels free to indulge in “language” herself if need be. Vlaskalic brings Marge to life with all her eccentricities and contradictions. Yet, she also shows subtly through Marge’s body language and voice how Marge is physically declining and in increasing pain during her last eight weeks.

What is especially impressive is how Han and Vlaskalic establish a real rapport as daughter and mother. Repeatedly they demonstrate, even if their characters say nothing about it, how deep the emotional ties are between the two women.

Eric Craig is the sole male in the play and is designated in the programme as “The Guy with the Nice Tush”, since this is how Marge refers to the various characters Craig plays. He is the Doctor who gives the bad news, the Lawyer who goes over Marge’s will, the Salesman who Marge inveigles into giving her a massive discount and the Mortician who is surprised to encounter a mother and daughter with such a seeming flippant air to arranging a funeral. Craig with minor costume changes clearly distinguishes these characters, but his Doctor and Mortician are the most memorable. Craig used a full, resonant baritone as the Doctor who has a non-nonsense demeanour but still projects an air of sympathy. His Mortician is very amusing – a meek, unworldly man who sticks to his script even if his clients are quite unlike any he has encountered before.

During the Lawyer’s meeting with Marge and Rachel, we learn that Rachel will inherit Marge’s collection of over 1200 pieces of amethyst glassware of all sizes and varieties. During the course of the action, actors on entering or exiting will deposit a piece of amethyst glass somewhere on stage until, by the end, all the furniture surfaces on stage are covered with glassware. We can’t know whether this is a directorial ploy or whether it is part of the script, and its meaning is not entirely certain. My guess is that it is a symbol of Rachel’s awareness of all that she has inherited from her mother which only grows larger the closer Marge approaches her death.

Stick Around is a fine play to inaugurate Here For Now’s new black box theatre. A 56-seat theatre is the perfect venue for such an intimate play. Fortunately, in contrast to the other main theatre company in town, elaborate sets are not part of Here For Now’s aesthetic, though the black box interior does lend more importance to lighting, and with Louise Guinand as lighting designer, Kevin Kruchkywich has a master at the helm. Since, at least in its first season in the new theatre, Here For Now is not presenting plays in rep, if you want to see Stick Around, you don’t have very long to do so.

Any visitor to Here For Now will see the company as a necessary antidote to the often over-lavish productions presented by the Stratford Festival. By focussing on acting and clarity of storytelling, Here For Now comes closer to the essence of theatre and why the medium continues to move us.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Daniela Vlaskalic as Marge, Chantelle Han as Rachel and Eric Craig as The Guy with the Nice Tush; Chantelle Han as Rachel and Daniela Vlaskalic as Marge. © 2025 Here For Now Theatre Company.

For tickets visit: www.herefornowtheatre.com.