1000 Islands Theatre: The Boy in the Moon: a moving story which leaves difficult questions for the audience to Ponder.
A play based on the memoir of Globe and Mail journalist Ian Brown’s experience of bringing up his disabled son, The Boy in the Moon by playwright Emil Sher, may not seem like an obvious production to mount at a theatre driven largely by tourism. The choice made by artistic director Brett Christopher to include it in this season’s program, however, may speak to a desire to bring in drama which deals with more complex subjects, as the inclusion of the Ghomeshi affair-inspired piece Asking For It later in September evidences.
The question is whether the audience who comes to see the play will be equally prepared to engage with the issues that it presents, since The Boy in the Moon is not a play which minces the difficult realities of caring for a child with severe disabilities. It chronicles the journey of Brown and his family from the birth of his son Walker, detailing the events and emotions involved along the way. This production, put on by Crow’s Theatre of Toronto and directed by Chris Abraham, also includes a revised version of the script from its original premiere in 2014 at the Great Canadian Theatre Company in Ottawa (which I happened to see at the time). While this production in 2019 at TIP is as equally moving as the one I saw then, a few of the design and staging choices do not quite complement the action of the play. …
