Kristen Thomson in Fulfillment Centre. Nick Blais’s set for the play relies entirely on cardboard boxes.Elana Emer/Supplied
Title: Fulfillment Centre
Written by: Abe Koogler
Director: Ted Dykstra
Actors: Evan Buliung, Gita Miller, Kristen Thomson, Emilio Vieira
Production & Venue: Coal Mine Theatre
City: Toronto
Year: Runs to Dec. 7, 2025
Bad luck can be seismic, a life-shattering act of god. More often, it’s mundane and self-perpetuated, no great sleight of destiny but merely the sum of a series of poor choices. In Fulfillment Centre, playwright Abe Koogler creates four characters who are down on their luck with no one to blame but themselves. He explores their loneliness and dissatisfaction without moral commentary, giving us a quietly aching play about people in various stages of falling apart.
Starring in Coal Mine Theatre’s Fulfillment Centre, Kristen Thomson is nothing if not fulfilled
In its Canadian premiere at the Coal Mine Theatre, Koogler’s 2017 script gets the subtle treatment it deserves. Director Ted Dykstra doesn’t demand that we empathize with any of the ne’er-do-wells on stage; in fact, sometimes we seem deliberately discouraged from letting any of them off the hook. Instead, we feel drawn in without motive to the predicaments of these four sad characters, all of whom seem unable to get what they want from life or even articulate what that is.
What they have in common is their physical and emotional displacement. Sixtysomething Suzan (Kristen Thomson) is broke and unhoused after a series of unsuccessful relationships. Once a folk singer who drifted contently around the U.S., she’s now camping in a New Mexico trailer park and applying for a job in the shipping department (a.k.a. the fulfilment centre) of a big-box chain store during the Christmas season.
The play opens with what’s effectively her “try-out” for the position; she packs boxes and collects pylons under the watch and clock of hiring manager Alex (Emilio Vieira). It’s all business and protocol until Alex breaks down with a sudden headache, and Suzan is able to relieve his pain with a back massage. Suddenly they face each other as human beings rather than cogs in the machine of Amazon-ian capitalism, and Alex hires her, despite how clearly physically unfit she is for the job.
Alex has problems of his own. He’s just moved from New York with his girlfriend Madeleine (Gita Miller), a relocation that has put immense strain on their relationship. Madeleine didn’t want to leave her comfortable and multifaceted city life. When she gets lost wandering around her new neighbourhood of adobe houses and barren yards, Madeleine (who’s Black) worries she’s ended up in the kind deep-south antebellum-spirited place where Black people are shot for knocking on doors. When Alex surprises her with an engagement ring, she screams in actual terror. When he tries to spice up their sex life with a little role-playing, she dissolves in laughter on the floor.
Emilio Vieira and Gita Miller play a couple who have just moved from New York.Elana Emer/Supplied
The three characters are further connected through a fourth in a way that brings to mind the interlocking relationships of Patrick Marber’s Closer. John (Evan Buliung) is a fortysomething drifter of few words who lives out of his car after being kicked out by his girlfriend. Suzan and Madeleine respond to him in ways that suggest more about their own self-destructive patterns than about who John really is. Suzan, who befriends him for company at the campsite, sees only the good in John, telling him he’s funny and compassionate, assuring him his girlfriend was a fool to cast him out. Madeleine, who matches with him on the dating app she uses surreptitiously, senses how dark and disturbed he is but pursues the connection nonetheless. Suzan calls him a “beautiful man”; Madeleine describes him as “ugly-hot.”
Part of what makes this so compelling are four excellent performances. First mention must go to Thomson, who brings so much to the role of Suzan; she is tender and funny, with an infectious laugh that fills the small theatre. But Suzan is also angry and defeated, and Thomson’s ability to hold these opposing traits in dynamic tension is exhilarating to watch. I was also particularly impressed by Miller’s work as the sharp and sardonic Madeleine, a role that treads close to unlikableness, but never goes there. In Miller’s hands, there’s an underlay of sadness and cynicism that makes Madeleine luminous and relatable.
Thomson and Evan Buliung, who plays a drifter living in his car.Elana Emer/Supplied
We are also treated to an inventive set by Nick Blais that relies entirely on cardboard boxes. They are lifted to transform into stools and unfolded to become the hood and front seats of John’s car. Blais is just as clever with his lighting design, particularly a stirring moment when only lights are used to suggest a sculpture installation.
This isn’t a play of big ideas. Its power resides in its ability to reveal messy and unprocessed feelings we recognize but can’t necessarily name. The play depends on natural chemistry between the characters – we need to instinctively understand why they’re drawn to each other despite all the red flags – and this was lacking in a couple of relationships. I wasn’t convinced by the connection between Alex and Madeleine as a long-term couple, and I felt that the gruff and bumbling John needed to be more overtly and dangerously sexual with Madeleine to explain her attraction to him.
But Fulfillment Centre still speaks volumes about the enduring tension between finding connection and direction in life and how a transactional world cheapens everything.