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Interior design by Ron Hu, Meghan Swaby and Sarah Favre now at the Tarragon Theatre. Jae Yang/Tarragon Theater
Title: Interior Design Written by: Rosa Laborde Director: Cat Sandler Cast: Sarah Favre, Long Hu, Anita Majumdar, Meghan Swaby Company: Tarragon Theater Venue: Tarragon Extraspace City: Toronto Year: Until Sunday, November 10, 2024
critic’s choice
Olivia (Rong Hu), a nihilistic documentarian turned temporary interior designer, stares at the audience with no small amount of sadness, and instead of trying to deal with the current turbulent global situation, she decides to take on the appeal of a marathon home improvement show. explain. She says it’s the happy ending at the heart of a relatively low-stakes, stylized episode of change that is so uplifting. Even small changes can improve the situation. Adjusting the size of your fireplace or the angle of your cabinets can suddenly make a stuffy space feel more like home.
Currently playing at the Tarragon Theater, Rosa Laborde’s Interior Design, a sharply comical and deceptively profound show, uses the metaphor of interior decoration to tell the story of four people who are reevaluating their place in the world as they approach the age of 40. captures the changing inner landscape and outer dynamics of a female friend. In the world and in each other’s lives. Now that their lives have coalesced around the everyday rather than the endless possibilities, they wonder whether the threads of history that bind them are strong enough to survive the renovation. As the HGTV show asked, will they like it or put it on their list?
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interior design Sarah Favre and Megan Swaby; Laborde handles each of her oversized but fully recognizable characters with seriousness and grace. Je Yang/Tarragon Theater
Olivia is invited to a skincare sales party at newly divorced Sophie’s minimalist apartment, but she is reluctant, tired of girls’ nights out that are all about small talk and capitalism. Hobbies-obsessed Cecilia (Anita Majumdar) is comfortable adding hashtags to group photos to promote her latest MLM pyramid scheme, and life coach Sophie (Sarah Favre) is trying to find a way to keep parties going. It seemed to imply that he was interfering with a friend, and Olivia felt relieved. Stop the sea of lotion. Sophie receives little support from marketer Maya (Meghan Swaby), an expert at getting both sides’ points across and avoiding conflict.
But as Olivia gears up to burst beaming Cecilia’s bubble, she realizes that the intervention is actually aimed at her own burnt-out depression. The events that follow, for better or worse, uproot each woman from stagnation.
Laborde’s keen ear for fast-paced, funny dialogue is matched by Kat Sandler’s fast-paced direction, as the women trade barbs interwoven with the 30-year history of aging fine wine and bitter poison. But the fun of this show is that it’s not just a one-night descent into a disintegrated friendship. Intervention is where exploration begins, not where it ends. In the long aftermath, Laborde treats each of her oversized but fully recognizable characters with seriousness and grace, and with a delicate but moving soundtrack by Maddie Bautista, each wall-breaking fourth He gives a monologue.
Despite the playwright’s swings from biting humor to realization, collapse, and back again, a quartet of seasoned actors convey the ebb and flow between tears and laughter like the subtle patterns of kitchen splash. Because it looks natural, there is no abruptness in tone.
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Anita Majumdar (left), interior designer Megan Swaby, Sarah Farb, and Long Hu. The quartet of accomplished actors make the ebbs and flows between tears and laughter seem as natural as the subtle patterns of a kitchen splash. tarragon theater
Ferb’s tight control and therapeutic speaking of Sophie, suppressing any remarks that might hurt her nerves and playing their friendship like it’s a game they can win, is a lot of fun. When the game pieces don’t move as expected, Ferb’s bland smile gives way to moments of dangerous vulnerability, and her entire personality is made up of nothing more than the smug way she overpronounces French expressions.
Who’s Olivia is serious and sarcastic, but also playful and mischievous. Set designer Shannon Lee Doyle is clearly having a great time. Olivia deliberately chooses the most outrageously noisy apartment decoration possible for Sophie. Sophie is a woman who can’t decide between painting her walls one of two nearly identical muted shades.
People-pleaser Maya isn’t the most well-defined character, perhaps by design, but Swaby gives her enough oomph to shine and shows off how the diverse foursome play out at the elementary school lunch table. It provides us with interesting snippets of how we met. This makes me wish there were more moments where we learn about the history of their friendship, but her reinvented attempts at knitting are some of the show’s best visual gags and some serious It represents her efforts to piece together a friendship with holes in it.
And speaking of serious absences, Cecilia, played by Majumdar, is feeling restless ahead of her milestone birthday and takes off the filters that curate life’s spontaneous parties on social media, asking, “Why is everything so hard?” “Do I have to?” he asks sadly. Before flying the shed completely. In the final part, the play deals some of its toughest and most bittersweet blows, as it deals with the sadness of a friendship that never ends.
Interior design particularly resonates with Millennials in its discussions of career, parenthood, relationship choices, and messages about the psychological damage caused by social media, especially to the next generation who won’t remember the world. Very likely. before it existed as a primary connection source.
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Long Hu as Olivia and Anita Majumdar as interior designer Cecilia. tarragon theater
Its broad message is sometimes too ambitious. Commentary on women’s stories in entertainment often glosses over the clever and subtle moments and hammers home the point with words, but when we can instead learn more about a particular woman, we often find ourselves in a different play. It looks like it is.
But what we get is funny and fresh, real and raw, and a look at what happens when the walls of a long-term relationship are torn down and only the foundation remains.
In the “to love or to list” debate, this falls squarely under “love.”
To ensure consistency in reviews across all critics, the Globe has discontinued its film and theater star rating system in favor of coverage of music, books, visual arts, and dance. Instead, outstanding works receive nominations chosen by critics across all coverage areas. (Typically excludes television reviews based on unfinished seasons.)
