A comedy of recognition

Robert Cushman
Thursday, March 16, 2000

SIBS

Tarragon Backspace, Toronto

Anyone who's an only child may feel left out, but for everybody else Sibs, short for siblings, is a feast of familial fun.

Written and performed by Diane Flacks and Richard Greenblatt, the show presents a grown-up brother and sister, now comprehensively orphaned. They are in their parents' empty home, having just emerged from the Jewish period of ritual mourning for their father; their mother died some years previously. Now it's time to take care of legal and financial business, but there are problems. She (they are given no names, except the occasional insulting sobriquet) lives in another city and is about to fly back there; he, with his own problems, thinks she's being unreasonable. So they squabble and blame, as they have done all their lives. The show takes us on a whistle-stop tour of these earlier skirmishes, eventually setting us down just a few moments later than the point at which we came in.

The first flashback is a montage of encounters from childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood, done with enchanting precision and panache. The physical choreography, in Alisa Palmer's production, is as immaculately timed and executed as the verbal. There is no time and no need for any change of costume or make-up, and as most of their time together was spent in this same house, Glenn Davidson's comfortable set serves admirably throughout.

She is the older of the two, and was greatly disappointed when the stork brought a boy instead of another girl; she compensates by introducing her baby brother to strangers as her baby sister. Flacks' air of overweening sweetness is perfect here; so is Greenblatt's google-eyed expression, as of one who suspects that something is being put over on him but cannot quite master the concept. He retains this suspicious look right into their grown-up years, though the eye-rolling becomes increasingly tinged with anticipated martyrdom, as if nothing she could do would surprise him but he still can't quite believe her. She has her own version of the same attitude, though it's rather more aggressive. She remains -- implacably and irreversibly -- older. Which may have as much to do with gender as with chronology.

The relationship isn't all antagonism of course. There are moments of sympathy or solidarity, mainly in the face of the adult world: an attitude that doesn't alter much when they become adults. After puberty hits, they discover at least one other piece of common ground: each distrusts the other's taste in women. There is also their inescapable Jewishness, and the way in which each wavers between accepting and resenting it. He turns his bar mitzvah speech into a youthful political credo; she makes her speech at his wedding her occasion for coming out as a lesbian. The play is largely structured around a series of Passover celebrations; once married with children, brother assumes the responsibility for these family feasts. Sister is often absent but there is generally a phone call, at least one of which ranks among the most hilarious bits in the show.

I wouldn't say that, when we return to square one, we arrive there with any greatly enriched understanding of the inhabitants. The past does not greatly illuminate the present; it merely confirms it. It will probably not tell you anything about the human condition that you don't already know, but then how many plays do? What this one offers, in spades, is the comedy of recognition.

And maybe I should withdraw my caveat about only children; the piece should ring true to anyone who has ever weathered any kind of enduring relationship. The jousting between the grown-up sibs (I speak as one who half-identifies, having a brother but no sister) is not that unlike the tensions between spouses or longtime lovers. From the opening words (''God, I'm so exhausted'') and the sight of the two of them slumped in opposite armchairs, it is clear that this is a play about the long haul, however arrived at, and about being there for it.

Some of the exchanges between the Him and Her in their maturity (''You are such a jerk'' -- ''What's your problem?'') really do suggest that nothing changes after childhood. The thrust and parry can of course become somewhat more sophisticated (''Do you have any unresolved issues?'' ''Not that I want to resolve.'') Rick Sachs contributes a background musical score, much of it played on xylophone, which suggest the water-drops of time falling with exquisite cruelty on a couple of human skulls. The rhythm of the two participants is equally impeccable; it's almost impossible to separate one from the other or text from execution; all are great. The bond between them seems, as befits the subject, unbreakable. The ending is as perfectly happy-sad as could be imagined. The show lasts for 80 minutes, no intermission, and I loved every second.