Ordena Stephens-Thompson, left, and Tony Nappo play Denise and Simon in The Neighbours at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto.Jae Yang/Supplied
- Title: The Neighbours
- Written by: Nicolas Billon
- Director: Matt White
- Actors: Tony Nappo and Ordena Stephens-Thompson
- Company: Green Light Arts in association with Tarragon Theatre
- Venue: Tarragon Theatre
- City: Toronto
- Year: Runs to March 15
Ask any true crime fanatic, and they’ll tell you: Start with the neighbours.
The Perfect Neighbour, for instance, director Geeta Gandbhir’s Oscar-nominated documentary about Florida’s Stand Your Ground laws, is horrific – not just because the film demonstrates exactly how the shooting of Ajike Owens could have been prevented, but because police bodycam footage shows that the accused shooter’s neighbours knew a tragedy was imminent long before Susan Louise Lorincz fired her gun.
In The Neighbours, Nicolas Billon’s gutsy, grisly play about an unassuming neighbourhood with a terrible past, Billon gets right to business: He starts – and ends – with the neighbours. We never get to meet the man accused of kidnapping a child and holding her hostage in a dog cage for a decade; we never get to see the victim or her daughter. When we become acquainted with the families of Stanley Court, it’s with a gaping hole at the centre of the community, a haunted house teeming with ghosts.
Billon introduces us to the wreckage slowly, deliberately: When we meet empty-nesters Simon and Denise (Tony Nappo and Ordena Stephens-Thompson, respectively), it’s as if we’ve known them for years. We make one-sided small talk: They address the audience as if telling a story at a barbecue, tripping over each other’s jokes as they hold each other’s hands. They’re good people, they tell us: They’re the kinds of neighbours who would have hidden Jews in their attic during the Second World War.
Meanwhile, another neighbour sits stage right (Richard Tse), never visible in full light for more than a few moments. His life is simple, we ascertain: He reads in his armchair, and drinks tea from a light pink teapot, never interrupting Simon and Denise as they recount the story of the pedophile next door.
Richard Tse plays one of the neighbours in the show.Jae Yang/Supplied
It’s a harrowing evening of theatre, but a frustrating one, as well – Billon’s impulse to plunge the audience into neighbourhood gossip, allowing only tantalizing dribbles of circumstance to ooze out, makes the top half of the show feel slippery and difficult to grasp, as if the story somehow floats above the play itself. Crucial details are mentioned once, then buried in non-sequiturs and banter – it takes quite a while for an immediate conflict to emerge, and for the play to establish why Simon and Denise are the right people to tell this story.
But the drama eventually gets cooking, and when it does, it crackles with zeal. We learn more about the monster who used to live next door, sure – but we learn more about Simon and Denise, too. Simon, who walks with a cane, is handy around the house: His early monologue about the perils and pitfalls of different types of screws is hilarious, at least at first, and Denise’s tenderness radiates off Stephens-Thompson’s skin. “There are no secrets in this family,” she promises to her unseen daughter – and to us – more than once.
But of course, there are secrets, ones I won’t spoil here. (Rather than Chekhov’s gun, keep an eye out for Chekhov’s copy of the Walrus.)
Somewhat predictably, however, The Neighbours eventually pivots its scope toward Simon, and in turn, the play sags – the cheeky, affable dad we’ve spent an hour getting to know somewhat chafes against the version of Simon we see weep into his coffee table at the end of the play.
That said, Nappo offers a powerful, subtle performance, in a role that makes the most of the actor’s notable range – we see him grin like a Cheshire cat and cry like a baby all in a matter of seconds. When Simon reminisces on his daughter’s infancy, it’s as if his skin starts to sparkle – Nappo holds all of Simon’s memories, regrets and dreams deeply inside his own body, and the resulting performance is electric.
Stephens-Thompson is dealt a trickier hand in Billon’s script: Denise is quiet, headstrong and proud, the far less loquacious half of her marriage. While Billon’s thorny plot twist doesn’t do either main actor any favours – their characters have to grapple with a massive shift that instantly upends their chemistry and rapport – Stephens-Thompson imbues Denise with strength and depth.
Tiny, broken scale-models of houses float above the heads of the actors.Jae Yang/Supplied
Director Matt White’s unpretentious production leans into the quirks of the play: Very little movement occurs in The Neighbours, and White smartly avoids layering Billon’s script with superfluous stage business. Indeed, there’s a riskiness to both the play and its production – both expect the audience to lock into the story without the luxury of context. It’s the ultimate experiment in “tell, don’t show,” and when it works, the intention is clear: When a story exists solely in the mouths of its teller, the two become one and the same. Such a framing asks a terrible, fascinating question: What’s worse, a terrible crime, or the bystander who didn’t report their own complicity in it?
Kelly Wolf’s set, if you can call it that, is similarly simple, just a few chairs and side tables. But above the heads of the actors float tiny, broken scale-models of houses – the symbolism, heavy-handed but effective, amps up the stakes of a play already leaky with stakes.
In the end, I’m unsure where to place The Neighbours, impressive in its craft but somehow dissatisfying in its impact, especially at a time when society en masse is sifting and thinking through the atrocities of the Epstein files. Billon’s story is gripping; the production’s acting is top-notch. But the play unfurls at a remove, as if we’re hearing that awful neighbour’s cruelty through too-thin walls, begging for a glimpse of what might be happening over the property line.