Classes clash in The Goodnight Bird

Lilly and Morgan Beaumont are a childless, retired couple living in a new condo. The play opens as they are about to go to bed. Lilly (Nicola Cavendish) is nagging Morgan (Christopher Hunt) repeatedly about whether or not he remembered to lock the door. Right away we get a sense of their distinct characters, their unhappy marriage, and their mutual loneliness.

When Parker (Graham Cuthbertson), a philosophical homeless man, finds his way into their bedroom, Lilly and Morgan are faced with unexpected reflections on their lives and marriage. Parker stumbles in, holding his head in his hands, moaning that he hit it on something and needs a bandage. After hurling himself off the roof of their building, he landed on their balcony, hitting his head on the barbeque.

Lilly ignores his pleas for help, and her immediate reaction is to insult him and tell him to get out. He passes out on their bed, and Lilly screams that he’s bleeding on the duvet.

Parker’s carefree, citizen-of-the-universe, one-with-nature attitude initially repulses Lilly, while Morgan has compassion for the man. But the longer Parker is in their room, the more he wins Lilly over with his recitations of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the more Morgan becomes suspicious and spiteful.

This juxtaposition of homelessness against a comfortable middle class lifestyle is present as Lilly and Morgan question what to do. Should they call the police? Give Parker some food? Take him out through the parking garage and release him like a rehabilitated animal?

Cavendish was wonderfully incorrigible as Lilly, the frustrated, retired high school teacher, and her transformation into a carefree woman of the woods, who follows Parker out into the night and gains a new perspective on life, was powerful. Morgan allows himself to be honest with Lilly, and they are finally able to say things to each other that they have been holding in for years. Cuthbertson was wildly delirious as Parker, a harmless-seeming lost soul looking for love.

Governor General Award-winning playwright Colleen Murphy has crafted a comic, melancholic story of personal reflection and courage, and with Roy Surette’s surefire direction, this cast turns a bedroom into a stage of complex emotional transformation.

The Goodnight Bird is presented by Centaur Theatre and the Kay Meek Centre from January 26 to February 14. For more information, visit kaymeekcentre.com.

Photo credit: David Cooper.