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by Steve Ross, directed by Jan Alexandra Smith

Here For Now Theatre, Marquee at the Stratford Perth Museum, Stratford

July 12-August 3, 2024

Steve: “This whole family is very dramatic”

As an actor and singer, Steve Ross had shown himself over the past 20 seasons to be an indispensable part of the Stratford Festival. This has never been more evident than in his funny, empassioned performance as Albin in La Cage aux Folles now playing at the Avon Theatre. Since 2021, however, Ross has also shown himself to be a masterful playwright. In 2021, Here For Now Theatre presented his serio-comic first play goldfish to widespread acclaim. In 2023 the company resented his serious play Life Without to further acclaim. Now the company is presenting his play 12 Dinners which will only serve to cement Ross’s reputation as a playwright whose works have become must-see events for theatre-lovers.

12 Dinners is Ross’s most autobiographical play to date with a central character named Steve played by Ben Skipper, who could easily be Steve Ross’s stunt double. The play is structured, as the titles suggests, in the form of glimpses of twelve family dinners that Steve has with his parents. Jane Spidell plays Steve’s mother Bettye and Geoffrey Pounsett his father Jim. The action begins in July 1995 just after Steffi Graf has won her sixth title at Wimbledon. Steve can stand to see his parents only once a month, but there comes a period late in the play when he can’t bring himself to see them at all. When precisely the last of the twelve dinners tales place is therefore unclear.

Ross has Steve serve as both narrator and character, often commenting on the action in frequent asides to the audience. The first few dinners begin in a generally comic vein since Steve as narrator is so quick to predict Bettye’s and Jim’s behaviour and to pause the action to alert us to quirks of hers that we are about to see. The quality of this predictability gradually changes from being funny to be oppressive, comedy and tragedy being flipsides of the same coin.

As we come to see, even though Bettye complains that Steve can only find time to dine with his parents once a month, she also spends every dinner relentlessness criticizing everything he says. One evening when he arrives, Bettye notes that his shirt is “still too tight”. This is her code phrase for saying that he is still overweight. This is related to other criticisms of how he gave up playing tennis, to how he gave up playing musical instruments, to how he gives up virtually everything he starts. When Steve has to confess that he has just quit his job, this only confirms in Bettye’s mind that Steve is hopeless as a human being. Even when Steve takes up a job in a mental hospital, Bettye is not pleased since she thinks mental illness is a subject that should never be mentioned.

Steve has told us that Bettye suffers from bipolar disorder, as did her father. Steve, we learn, suffers from depression and regularly sees a therapist. Bettye is meant to see a therapist but talks to him only as long as it takes to receive a prescription. Bettye’s quirks and habits of thinking, her continual verbal abuse of Steve and Jim, soon become no longer funny but frightening. When Bettye won’t face up to the onset of physical degeneration as well as mental, we wonder how the family can survive.

Steve Ross’s writing beautifully captures how people naturally speak and how they use everyday language to convey multiple meanings. Director Jan Alexandra Smith, who also directed Ross’s Life After, knows how people can use the slightest glances and gestures to surround an ordinary statement in irony or displeasure. Bettye reaches for the gravy boat while Steve is still serving himself, the implicating being that without this sign Steve would not know when to stop. The way that Smith orchestrates how family arguments flare up, seemingly without cause, is so vivid audience members will likely cringe in remembering similar events in their own pasts.

As Steve, Ben Skipper, not long out of theatre school, is a marvel. He has confidence and presence and excels in gradating Steve’s changing attitude within the play and in narrating the play. Skipper initially uses a booming radio presenter-style voice as the narrator when his first goal in showing us the twelve dinners are comic. This voice contrasts with the quieter, unforced voice that he has Steve use when dining with his parents. Gradually the distinction between the two voices disappears as the Steve, who is outside the action, becomes one with the Steve who is inside the action.

I don’t read programmes before seeing plays so I was amazed to discover that Jane Spidell was the actor playing Bettye. The wig, the glasses, the frumpy clothes completely disguise her. Spidell plays the role, one quite unlike anything she has before, to perfection. Spidell subtlety changes how Bettye delivers her remarks to Steve and Jim so that what first seemed like unpleasant jabs eventually appear like pointed verbal assaults meant to humiliate her son and husband. This, of course, reflects the course of a disease that has not sufficiently been treated. Also, long before we learn that Bettye has a purely physical disease, we recall that Spidell has incrementally shown us Bettye’s increasing difficulty in moving. Spidell’s Bettye tragically becomes like alien to her own family. Bettye is a subtle character and she often utters her barbs sotto voce. My one complaint is that Spidell’s sotto voce is often so much lower in volume than Skipper and Pounsett’s speaking level that she is sometimes difficult to hear.

Geoffrey Pounsett has far few lines than do Skipper or Spence, but he fully radiates the emotions that silently wrack Jim as Bettye berates him or Steve. Pounsett shows Jim to be a loving husband and father, who may be a fix-it man in ordinary life, but who has no clue how to fix the situation he is living in. Jim knows why his wife speaks with such malice but he is frightened, not just for himself but for her by the irrevocability of the some of the nastier things she says. Pounsett so fully communicates the pain of Jim’s helplessness that we can feel it grow from one dinner to the next.

12 Dinners is a powerful piece of theatre. It may reflect very specific circumstances in Steve Ross’s life, but Ross has transmuted these circumstances in to a story that everyone will be able to relate to. By showing the different ways in which mother and son cope with the effects of mental illness, Ross helps to remove the sense of shame and silence that many people still feel when confronted with the subject. Unsurprisingly, the run has almost completely sold out. So, you really must rush if to want to see the latest play by one of Canada’s most talented playwrights.

Christopher Hoile

Photos: Ben Skipper as Steve; Geoffrey Pounsett as Jim, Jane Spidell as Bettye and Ben Skipper as Steve. © 2024 Ann Baggley.

For tickets visit: www.herefornowtheatre.com.