Imagine you’re a retired nuclear scientist living with your partner in a remote seaside cottage. There’s a post-apocalyptic sense of foreboding in the air, although you’re happy to live out the rest of your days right there — until an old friend and fellow scientist comes for an unexpected visit, carrying a dangerous proposition.
This happens to be the premise of a play called The Children, which is set for an upcoming revival from Carpenter Square Theatre. Writer Lucy Kirkwood was reportedly inspired by the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011 to create the darkly comedic tale. The production was first staged in London in 2016 and later on Broadway in 2017. It went on to receive two Tony Award nominations in 2018.
In the story, the married nuclear physicists are Hazel and Robin, visited by former colleague Rose. Director C.W. Bardsher says the thematic foundations of the play are incredibly timely.
“As it goes along, we realize that the themes of the play are … an older generation cleaning up the mess we’ve left behind,” he said, speaking to Oklahoma Gazette via phone. “This play takes place [amid] and is mentioning themes of nuclear fallout, but the themes can certainly reach further into climate change or any other thing that we feel like older generations have left as a problem for the younger generation.”
The play, running at just under two hours, is taut a three-hander, meaning these three main characters are the only ones driving the action between them. It’s an opportunity for grounded drama and a chance for performers to shine. Bardsher enjoys the challenge of a limited cast.
“You really get a chance in the rehearsal process to nail down these characters and find the complexities and the contradictions within them,” Bardsher said. “So we’ve been having a really fun time exploring these characters with the major themes.”
Bardsher credited his actors — Laurie Blankenship, Barry Thurman and Shelly Harmon — with carrying the emotionally complicated story and the fraught dynamics between the three longtime colleagues.
In the play, audience members will likely get an idea early on that the new arrival, more freewheeling Rose, is a bit too comfortable in the cottage, leading Hazel to have her suspicions about Rose’s true relationship with Robin.
One particular directing challenge, Bardsher said, was in blocking and keeping the movement and staging authentic while also “making sure that the things that they are doing and the pictures that they are making on stage are as interesting and compelling as the script [they’re] working from.”
When asked about a favorite moment from the production, he pointed to the ending — although, for obvious reasons, he couldn’t discuss it in too much detail.
“I believe that the ending is satisfying, but it doesn’t leave you with all the answers,” he said. “It’s. It gives you enough answers to be satisfied, but it leaves you enough wiggle room that you will want to be thinking about it throughout the next years or throughout the next few days. What does that mean? What was her choice here?”
Live theater
Bardsher has been a director with Carpenter Square Theatre since around 2011. After a four-year trek to Chicago, he returned to work in Oklahoma City in 2018, making for a current total of roughly seven years with Carpenter Square. He appreciates that the theater occupies a specific place in OKC’s arts world.
“I do love particularly Carpenter Square Theatre’s mission statement in the pantheon of Oklahoma City community theaters, which is to be doing modern work, to be doing new plays and the cutting-edge things,” he said. “I appreciate that Carpenter Square … holds that place in the community of allowing new and upcoming plays, and for the community to find a new favorite playwright. Somebody may have never heard of Lucy Kirkwood before. They come see The Children, and they’re like, ‘Well, I really like her now.’”
Our conversation turned broadly to live theater as an art form, the importance of which can’t be overstated. Colloquially, any theater fan could tell you how life-changing sitting in an audience can be. But there have been actual studies done by real scientists that have found that watching live theater can increase empathy, encourage socio-political thinking and even drive people to charitable giving.
“Oh, boy,” Bardsher said in agreement. “Live theater is just — I mean, there’s nothing like it around. I know that that’s such an obvious answer, but it’s transformative type of thing.”
Many people’s first introduction to theater comes in high school drama class, Bardsher said, which isn’t always the best representation.
“So many times, a lot of them are great scripts, but they have been sanitized to be appropriate or they’re not dealing with things that are quite up to date or modern for us,” he said.
Stories are powerful no matter the media, but there’s something special about live performances.
“I found that people are usually surprised if they don’t have a lot of experience with theater,” he said, “of the difference in the way that the messages and the themes and the jokes and the tears hit different when you have the people in a physical room with you performing it, as opposed to having that block of a screen, a television or a movie screen.”
He paraphrased a sentiment that’s been shared many different ways: the idea that history provides a factual framework for the past, while art reveals its emotional truths.
“Even as we find ourselves today in a very split and divisive time, I think as we create art, it is important for us to create it,” he said. “So we are leaving a record behind of, yes, we know what happened during this time, but how did we feel as a society or as a group or as a community about what happened at this time?”
The play is scheduled to run Jan. 12 to Feb. 2. Visit carpentersquare.com.
This article appears in Stitt’s Top Ten.