Suburban Motel

David E. Kemp is a drama professor at Queen’s University and the
author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

George F. Walker, winner of Governor General’s Literary Awards for
Nothing Sacred and Criminals, is perhaps Canada’s foremost playwright.
Suburban Motel is a series of six plays that take place in the same
motel room. Each play has a cast of four or five characters, and some of
the characters appear in more than one play. Here, as in most of his
other work, Walker is most interested in people living on the margins of
society. His dramatic universe is populated by the confused, the hunted,
the depressed, the lonely, and the desperate. The comedy of Suburban
Motel is inextricably bound with a sense of horror and profound sadness.
Yet the characters confront their dismal circumstances with a kind of
street-smart integrity and courage that makes it impossible for us to
feel superior.