Prodigals: the return is the same in any language

 Prodigals: a play by Sean Minogue

It's about a murder trial. Or is it?

 

Wesley broke the chains of small town drudgery right after high school, heading to the big city to study law and make something of himself. Now he's back, called to testify as a character witness for a man he used to know. At a loose end, he winds up back in the bar where he hung out in the old days, and finds his old gang still propping up the duct-taped bar stools, still airing the same grievances over the scarred pool table. To them, he's a reminder how far they haven't come, and old resentments stir in their sullen depths. 

 

Little do they know that Wesley's big city life isn't all cocktails and fashion models.  

 

Before he moved to the big city (Toronto) and started writing for magazines and newspapers, playwright Sean Minogue grew up in Sault Ste Marie, a steel town and Great Lakes transit hub in Ontario's rocky, mineral-rich northern vastness. Prodigals is set in Northern Ontario but it could be any small town in any Canadian province. Any shoddy bar you were a regular at as high school ended. The cast is everybody you left behind, or who left you behind when they went away. Now they're back, or you're back, dragging old hopes, forgotten failures, former loves and future hook ups. It’s a world where you don’t so much choose your life partner as drift into habits that aren’t easily broken. The best of a lot of not great options.  

(True story: faced with being stuck in a different Northern Ontario mill town for life, I bailed on my high school boyfriend and lit out for post-secondary too. Once you're gone, it's really hard to go back. You'll never fit into that small world again.) 

The prodigal son's return to his local bar is a trope familiar in many contemporary societies, as anyone who watched in cringing fascination the droll machinations of Bastian in the well-lubricated German mini-series  ÜberWeihnachten (2020) can attest. The secrets and desperation of small-town life get a darker and grittier outing in El Camino Christmas (2017), with the addition of American gun violence.  

No gun violence in Prodigal.and a bit less booze. It's very Canadian that way. Polite until pushed and then the blunt truth lands with the force of a one-two punch. 

 

The cast is tight: four men and two women, although you might believe you've met Benny, the man on trial, because he gets mentioned so often he's almost a presence even though he's never seen or heard from directly. The dialogue is spot on for its milieu: not the sparkle of a Noël Coward play nor the suburban marital snark of Neil Simon, but the everyday despair of Death of a Salesman. They're Canadian Willie Lomans here, minus the necktie and the travel. The ring of real life in every scene.  Questions of friendship, sex, loyalty, love, and the ethical challenges those can raise all get a look in without bogging down the narrative. 

 

You can take the boy out of the North, Wesley's visit tells us, but old bonds will strangle you just as surely when you return. For all its small-town roots, this Northern Gothic play - now book - makes for compelling theatre with a surprisingly wide appeal. 

 

Thanks to @lat46publishing and @river_street_writes for the review copy.  

Also check out Sean Minogue's debut novel, Terminal Solstice, from Turnstone Press.

 

#Latitude46 #RiverStreetWrites #Prodigal #SeanMinogue #plays #Canadian #playwrights #NorthernGothic #SaultSteMarie #murder #highschool #reunion #friendship #loyalty #casting #characters #smalltownbar #drinking #infidelity #trial #Ontario #betrayal #backstabbing #TurnstonePress