“Class Struggle” Has a New Meaning in ‘Parent’s Night’
Nicole is overworked, underpaid, and at her wits end when she has to meet with two parents of students in her grade three class. Enter John, a worried upper middle class father recently separated from his wife and is concerned about his son’s grades, and Rosie, a mother working multiple jobs to support her husband who struggles with drug addiction and her daughter. Chaos quickly unfolds as the parents panic about their students’ care and Nicole attempts to grapple with both their concerns and the pressures of her own life.
Parent’s Night by George F. Walker and directed by Ian Malcolm is the fifth show of Theatre Kingston’s season and is playing at the Tett Centre. The show takes place entirely in a third grade classroom which seems ill-fitting to the venue’s 19th century stone walls, however, the alley-style staging minimizes contact between the fictional setting and the rustic building. Rosemary Doyle’s set design also helps to make the classroom distinct from the Tett by bookending the playing space with a whiteboard, corkboard, and desk at one end facing a section of book cubbies for the students at the other. The cubbies are speckled with polka dots which match the carpet and two children’s tables in the centre of the stage. Hanging from the beams running along the room’s ceiling is a collection of art made by children in the fictional class.
The mundane classroom setting is quickly offset by the exaggerated characters, particularly the parents. Introduced first is Tony Babcock as John, the overbearing father who manages throughout the show to come across as both despicable and pitiful. One of the benefits of the alley staging was being able to watch the reactions of audience members on the opposite side of the room. I could gaze across the stage following almost any of Babcock’s lines to see a wide array of expressions including laughter, empathy, disgust, and more often than not, a combination of the three.
While John is cowardly and attempts to bribe multiple characters to avoid conflict, Rosie, played by Emily Elliot, comes across as aggressive and abrasive. Rosie also acts as a foil to John economically, where he graduated from law school and has a cushy office job, Rosie works as a stripper and describes her home as the one “…where the grass is never mowed because the owner lives in Russia and he doesn’t give a shit.” Despite playing a belligerent and headstrong parent, Elliott manages to find moments of humanity for the character. During these bits, the audience is not only able to understand her struggles but sympathize with them.
Amidst the havoc of the parents is Shannon Donnelly as Nicole, the exhausted voice of reason. At times, she seems to be the audience surrogate as she exhibits the shock and confusion I might have if dealing with the ridiculous expectations and accusations of the other characters. Throughout the play, Donnelly acts as an anchor to the exaggerated personalities of the disconcerted parents as well as a small dose of reality into the comedic script.
In the program, Doyle notes that the second half of the Theatre Kingston season is “…exploring the lives of the economically challenged.” Parent’s Night, at first glance, is a lighthearted comedy about teachers dealing with domineering parents, but central to all of the laughs is really a conflict in ideologies between the upper class John and working class Rosie. Walker is one of Canada’s most produced and most prolific playwrights, so if you’re interested in seeing anyone try to tackle these issues with a bit of humour, Parent’s Night is a pretty safe bet.
Theatre Kingston‘s production of ‘Parent’s Night’ plays until March 29, 2025 at the Tett Centre. Find more information here.
This review has been co-produced with the Kingston-Whig Standard.
