T-Rex and friends to star in ‘Extinction Therapist’ premiere

It's a bad news/more bad news/good news situation for the characters you'll meet in Clem Martini's new play at Theatre Aquarius.

The bad news is they're going to die (not necessarily during the action of the play) and, worse, they're the very last of their kind, as in extinction. The dreary trudge to the tar pits.

What could be the good news after that? Well, they're the stars of The Extinction Therapist," which will enjoy its world premiere in Hamilton on Jan. 27. People who saw the dress rehearsal recently were gasping for breath through their laughter, I'm told. So it's promising, despite the subject matter which, well, isn't. But, you know, every cloud ...

The aforementioned characters in this play include a Tyrannosaurus Rex, a woolly mammoth, a short-eared shrew, smallpox virus and a human minister of the environment, all being counselled through their shock and grief by an extinction therapist," Dr. Dennis Marshall, who has issues of his own.

Now that's strange. A therapist, with issues of their own?

It's like what a colleague called stretched reality,'" says director Christine Brubaker, of the strange, part-fantastical, part-very-real world that the play inhabits.

It's not every curtain that rises on a 40-foot Jurassic theropod with teeth that can really chew up the scenery. This curtain doesn't either, because the Tyrannosaurus in The Extinction Therapist" is played by Christopher Stanton.

The actors are in stylized attire, part of the ingenious, creative solution to the play's demands devised by the crack costume and set design crew at Theatre Aquarius, many of them Hamilton natives.

Let's just say, Stanton is not exactly wearing a Barney costume.

But the character is nonetheless a T-Rex, an insecure one, strangely given that T-Rex was an apex predator, but extinction looms and it's that kind of play.

The woolly mammoth, played by Rebecca Northan, is not insecure, but she's very randy, insatiably so, yet frustrated because you don't meet a lot of woolly mammoths anymore, says Brubaker, the director, who is in Hamilton from Calgary for the show. She has directed more than 25 world premieres and written four original works.

She is the one who sold the idea of The Extinction Therapist" to Theatre Aquarius as a world premiere because she read and adored the script by the aforementioned Clem Martini, celebrated Calgary playwright. In this play, says Christine, Clem has captured the recognition of a moment where we're having an astronomically fast decline of biodiversity, human-induced. But that's only part of the story. He (Clem) understands the hubris (that brought us to this point) and (through the characters) he puts us inside stories, of aging, and of how to be inside relationships and interconnectedness."

The play is, of course, darkly, lightly, knowingly and compassionately funny, says Brubaker, but also deadly serious, as it would have to be, moving itself forward under a cloud of doom, and it deals with monumental issues, albeit often through a lens of relativism and absurdity.

Central to the play's action and thematic development is the title character, therapist, Dr. Marshall who is played by actor Richard Clarkin, who has performed in such shows as Murdoch Mysteries," Son of a Critch" (shot in Newfoundland), The Drawer Boy" (for which he won a Canada Screen Award for best supporting actor) and much more.

My job as a therapist is to make the most of their desperate situation," says Clarkin, and help to discover what they can focus on to make their lives more pleasant. It's a responsibility."

Clarkin, who has performed before at Theatre Aquarius in Sherlock Holmes: The Final Adventure" and Dinner With Friends," says that over the course of their group therapy he and the characters touch on a wacky amalgam of big questions." But through it all and on the flip side of the prodigious humour all the characters have moments of great pathos. As in group therapy, everyone, with all their quirks, needs to drop into their own truth and suffering."

His character has his own work to do, as he struggles with personal issues, in his marriage and other aspects of his life, issues which, as with the other characters, bring one up against feelings of our own mortality, of what it is to face death."

Other cast members are: Karen Ancheta as the short-eared shrew; Brandon McGibbon as the minister of the environment; and Anand Rajaram as smallpox virus.

The Extinction Therapist" runs Jan. 27 to Feb. 11, at Theatre Aquarius, 190 King William St., in Hamilton.

For tickets, 905.522.7529 or 1.800.465.7529 or theatreaquarius.org

Jeff Mahoney is a Hamilton-based reporter and columnist covering culture and lifestyle stories, commentary and humour for The Spectator. jmahoney@thespec.com