Moss Park: Keeping hope’s door open

When you have landed on the garbage dump of life, the only way to go is up. At least, that is how Tina, a single-mother with a toddler, thinks. Meanwhile, her on-again/off-again boyfriend, Bobby, dreams of better times but is seemingly incapable of dealing with reality or even holding a job for more than a single day.

Playwright George F. Walker introduced Tina and Bobby a decade ago in Tough. Then, she was pregnant and they were trying to deal with their future together or apart. In Moss Park, they are apparently three years older (judging from the age of their daughter) and they are drowning in present disasters.

Tina, her daughter and her mother are being evicted from their apartment because they are five months behind on the rent. She is pregnant again after a brief reunion with Bobby. Meanwhile, he has just been fired again and is considering a life of petty crime or discovering some talent — as a rapper, perhaps.

He suggests such possible solutions as moving the family in with his alcoholic father and marijuana-smoking ex-biker girl friend or collecting the proceeds from his foray into the break-and-enter scene from the storage locker in which they are stashed.

It is harder to sympathize with Bobby the loser than with Tina the fighter, but, as directed by Patrick McDonald in the Green Thumb production at GCTC, it is clear that the two still care for each other. If he were prepared to grow up enough to take on some level of responsibility, they would be together as a family of four. The alternative is living apart and aborting the unborn child.

While Walker lays the disaster quota on somewhat heavily, dialogue is snappy, flipping from tragedy to comedy in moments, and the relationship is crystal clear. Keeping it simple is also in keeping with the Green Thumb style and with having an underlying moral.

Short (65 minutes) and vivid, the production is enhanced and the circumstances underlined by Martin Conboy’s set and lighting design.

And, despite the potentially depressing subject matter, Moss Park keeps the door of hope open a crack. Love may not be enough to drag Tina and Bobby out of their pit, but it is one step up the ladder.

 

Director: Patrick McDonald

Set and lighting: Martin Conboy

Sound: Glen McCann

 

Cast:

Bobby………………….Graeme McComb

Tina…………………….Emma Slipp