Spotlight: Kristen Thomson depicts a marriage gone pear-shaped in her powerful new play Someone Else
Over a decade ago, Kristen Thomson collaborated with director Chris Abraham to create I, Claudia, the now-classic work about a 12¾-year-old girl bearing the angst of tweendom while coping with the fallout from her parents’ divorce. The play, which was later made into a feature film, drew on Thomson’s own parents’ breakup. The Toronto actor and playwright has continued to mine her life for wrenching, bittersweet theatre with a smart mouth. This month, she premieres Someone Else, a new collaboration with Abraham that dissects the grinding realities of motherhood and marriage.
Thomson plays Cathy, a middle-aged comedian whose 18-year relationship with her doctor husband is hurtling toward destruction, due to a toxic mix of complacency and misdirected desire. In I, Claudia, Thomson embodied preadolescent confusion in a jaunty red beret and a mask; in Someone Else, she stares down the disappointments of adulthood barefaced and head-on.
THEATRE Someone Else Berkeley Street Theatre Opens Jan. 10
