The Little Years

Shannon Hengen is an associate professor of English at Laurentian
University and the author of Margaret Atwood’s Power: Mirrors,
Reflections and Images in Select Fiction and Poetry.

This play in two acts, which had a successful run at Toronto’s Theatre
Passe Muraille in 1995, spans some 45 years in the lives of seven
characters.

The theme of time is skilfully treated. The main character, a
frustrated female mathematician, exposes the motives of two male artists
who are both chasing after fame as resulting essentially from a
misunderstanding of time. The play’s mother figure, parent to the
mathematician and to one of the artists, herself misuses time by
emphasizing the importance of gaining immortality through one’s work;
she grows old and enters the timelessness of senile dementia. The
play’s central thesis seems to be that if we understood time better,
we would lead better lives.

For a work that is in part about art and poetry, The Little Years
exhibits a curious flatness of language. At one point, the play’s most
sympathetic character remarks, “You can’t see the wind, only what it
touches.” Mighton’s relative inattention to how that character
“touches” the others (particularly her sister-in-law, the frustrated
mathematician) leaves this interesting play without a focal point.