Two Plays: «Sitting on Paradise» and «A Guide to Mourning»

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

Born in Regina, Eugene Strickland now lives in Calgary and is
playwright-in-residence at Alberta Theatre Projects. ATP produced his
1994 play, Some Assembly Required, as well as the two plays in this
collection. In his excellent introduction, Bob White of ATP notes that
Strickland’s unique gift is to create characters that an audience can
identify with—middle-class people with modest aspirations—and then
“skew” these “folks next door” by dramatizing the ways in which
they are profoundly alienated from their lives or the world around them.

In Sitting on Paradise, Roy, a businessman, and Wolf, his New Age
adviser, develop plans for Synchronicity Ridge, a gated cooperative in
the wilderness. Problems arise when Roy’s wife becomes enraged by the
plan. Rampant materialism and our relationship to our personal
possessions are mercilessly parodied.

A Guide to Mourning is a much darker comedy. A widow deals with her
husband’s death by engaging in a series of acts ranging from the
practical to the bizarre. When her children return home and funeral
arrangements proceed, events become even more bizarre and fantastic. It
seems that this dysfunctional family will never find a mutually
satisfying way of burying the paterfamilias. There’s even a drunken
minister running amok.

Strickland has a singular talent for wringing comedy and laughter from
characters who are on the verge of becoming sociopaths.