A Darling Family: A Duet for Three

Shannon Hengen is an assistant professor of English at Laurentian
University.

Griffiths, author of Maggie & Pierre and co-author of Jessica, has won
four Dora Mavor Moore Awards for her previous work. This play was
nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. Its
subtitle aptly suggests the play’s central complication, an unplanned
pregnancy discussed by a couple who have been together only a few
months. They and the fetus form the “duet for three.”

Griffiths insists that the “play is ninety minutes without
intermission, set, sound, or lighting cues,” intensifying the already
powerful dialogue and characterization. She, a magical thinker, argues
with He, a pragmatist, about the timing of the pregnancy. Ready to
redeem herself for a child lost earlier, She attempts to persuade her
husband that, in order to become a father, He could postpone his
carefully laid two-year plan to free his creativity. Facing parenthood,
both in turn confront the trauma and loss of their own childhoods with
gripping honesty and humor.

A degree of self-acceptance arising from their decisions in the play
may earn the characters their closing remarks—“She: Tell me that you
love me.” “He: I love you.” “She: I love you. Are we grown up
now?”—but we are not entirely convinced. The journey towards depth
of feeling that they so painfully undergo does, however, seem completely
authentic.