Intoxicating: People, Places and Things at Coal Mine Theatre

Kwaku Okyere, Louise Lambert, Sarah Murphy-Dyson and Nickeshia Garrick in People, Places and Things (Photo: Elana Emer)

Duncan Macmillan’s People, Places and Things has landed at Toronto’s Coal Mine Theatre in a production that is as intimate as it is harrowing. Directed by Diana Bentley, this Canadian English-language debut transforms the celebrated 2015 play into an immersive experience, leveraging the theatre’s compact, square stage to pull the audience into Emma’s chaotic journey through addiction and recovery.

The staging is meticulously designed to heighten tension and disorientation. Steve Lucas’s minimalist set, paired with Bonnie Beecher and Jeff Pybus’s stark lighting design, creates a sterile environment that feels both oppressive and exposed. Thomas Ryder Payne’s sound design intensifies this unease, layering hallucinatory vibrations that ripple through the space. Actors frequently break the fourth wall—perching in aisles or hanging from rafters—collapsing the divide between audience and performance.

Louise Lambert’s portrayal of Emma is tightly controlled yet deeply affecting. Unlike Irish actor Denise Gough, who originated the role to great acclaim at Britain’s National Theatre with a performance lauded for its raw vulnerability and explosive emotional depth, Lambert opts for a harder-edged interpretation. Her Emma remains coiled with tension, wielding cynicism like armour against collapse. This calculated detachment makes her less likely to crumble into tears but no less compelling, as she delivers biting critiques of recovery programs while embodying the contradictions of addiction: intelligence weaponized against herself, defiance masking fragility. Macmillan’s writing amplifies these contradictions with sharp wit that cuts through the darkness, offering moments of levity even as Emma spirals deeper into despair.

Emma’s identity as an actress is central to her character—and her addiction. She hides behind roles both onstage and off, using performance as a way to avoid confronting her own pain. Even her name isn’t real: she is known as Sarah, Lucy, and briefly Nina (from Chekhov’s The Seagull), each identity another layer of artifice she uses to shield herself from reality. “If I’m not in character,” she confesses at one point, “I’m not even sure I’m really there.” The play uses this duality to explore how Emma’s dependence on artifice complicates her recovery. In rehab, where patients are asked to re-enact moments from their lives in staged exercises meant to foster accountability, Emma struggles with the demand for authenticity. For someone who has spent years perfecting the art of pretending, these exercises feel less like healing and more like another performance.

Fiona Reid shifts seamlessly among her three roles as Emma’s therapist, doctor and mother, bringing distinct energy to each. As Lydia, the therapist, Reid balances professional composure with moments of genuine care. Her portrayal of the doctor carries a pragmatic optimism that contrasts sharply with Emma’s scepticism.

As Emma’s mother, Reid moves in an entirely different direction: exhausted and unwilling to indulge her daughter’s declarations of guilt or change. Her bluntness—culminating in the line “Sweetheart, drink and drugs were the only things that made you any fun”—elicited audible gasps from the audience on opening night. The intended cruelty of the remark (perhaps in retaliation for her out-of-control daughter’s having once broken her fingers) cuts through Emma’s carefully rehearsed contrition like a scalpel, exposing the raw fractures in their relationship. Macmillan’s brilliant writing is especially sharp here: People, Places and Things is a play that is as funny as it is devastating—a rare combination that heightens its emotional impact.

Bentley’s gripping direction pulls the audience into Emma’s unraveling with unrelenting force, making every moment feel immediate and inescapable. The staging is queasy and incisive, disorienting yet precise, as if the audience itself is teetering on the edge of withdrawal. Farhang Ghajar as Mark and Oliver Dennis as Emma’s father bring subtle weight to their roles, while Christopher Allen as Foster adds a steadying presence in the volatility of rehab. The ensemble plays an integral part as well, embodying Emma’s disorientation through fragmented movements choreographed by Alyssa Martin. These elements combine to evoke both withdrawal and hallucination without overwhelming the narrative.

Coal Mine Theatre’s People, Places and Things thrives on contrasts that unsettle rather than resolve. Moments of dark humour collide with suffocating tension; sharp performances are framed within stripped-down staging that magnifies every emotional crack. The play interrogates performance itself—whether in Emma’s staged confessions or her parents’ refusal to play their expected roles—leaving audiences to grapple with uncomfortable truths about artifice, addiction and survival. Extended through March 7, it’s a must-see production that reminds us recovery isn’t just hard work—it’s a reckoning with the truth.

– Deirdre Kelly is a Toronto-based journalist, author and internationally recognized dance critic and style writer on staff at The Globe and Mail newspaper from 1985 to 2017. She writes for Dance Magazine in New York, the Dance Gazette in London, and NUVO in Vancouver, and is a contributor to the International Dictionary of Ballet and AWOL: Tales for Travel-Inspired Minds. The best-selling author of Paris Times Eight and Ballerina: Sex, Scandal and Suffering Behind the Symbol of Perfection, she is a two-time recipient (2020 and 2014) of Canada’s Nathan Cohen Prize for outstanding critical writing. In 2017, she joined York University as Editor of the award-winning The York University Magazine where she is also the publication’s principal writer. In 2023, she published her latest book, Fashioning The Beatles: The Looks That Shook The World.