THEATRE REVIEW

MAY 2025 | Volume 251

 

A sex addict, a love addict, a porn addict and a pedophile walk into a bar … No, not a bar but a therapy session. That’s the concept of Katherine Gauthier’s Meeting, an ITSAZOO-Pacific Theatre co-production with help from Neworld Theatre. This episode of Theatre Meets Therapeutics, directed by Chelsea Haberlin, features very strong, very intense acting but some questionable dramatic strategies.

We’re watching the meeting of a support group called Co-Dependents, Love and Sex Addicts Anonymous. Three of the participants seem to be veterans of the group: Linda (Carmela Sison), a self-described love addict; Patrick (Chris Lam), a gay sociologist(?) addicted to pornography; and Dawn (Kaitlin Williams), who acts as facilitator, though she later admits she has no experience or credentials to do so.

Two new guys join them this night. Nervous, hyper-aggressive Rob (Sebastien Archibald) admits to being addicted to sex, turned on by every woman he sees. He half-heartedly claims to want to cure his addiction because he loves his girlfriend, though later he’ll argue that what he feels is normal and it’s the social norm that is aberrant. He’s also in some kind of legal situation where he must attend such meetings and be signed off.

Finally, tentative, self-effacing, apologetic Arthur (Marcus Youssef) joins the group. He initially describes his condition as “sexual anorexia”—he can’t seem to want or have sex with his partner. But soon he admits to being turned on by her young daughter, an impulse he has desperately resisted.From there the meeting devolves into arguments over his pedophilia, interrupted only by a role-playingexchange he agrees to do with Dawn who, in a bizarre moment of regression, reveals her own childhood trauma.

I liked quite a few things about this show. Some of the acting is powerfully affecting and effective. Youssef’s Arthur is devastating. Williams does a remarkable job keeping Dawn on an even keel as she tries to navigate the impossible conflicts within the group; and her own regression to an eight-year-old, if hard to believe, is terrifying. Lam’s calm, rational Patrick is the anchor that keeps the play from spinning off into high melodrama, and his nature vs. nurture argument regarding pedophilia was for me the play’s most interesting takeaway.

I had trouble with the characters of Linda and Rob, partly because they are the least likable, least empathetic members of the group. Every meeting, no matter the organization, has its assholes, the performative narcissists who interrupt others and won’t shut up. Whereas everyone else is dressed down, Linda is dressed up, and she tends to lecture the others rather than talk to/with them. And Rob is just over-the-top one-note aggressive. I wanted more nuance and variety in the actors’ performances, even if their characters are written without it.

Another part of my problem with Linda was Haberlin’s staging, which has the characters in a circle with the audience sitting in a circle around them. Because I was sitting directly behind Linda, who never moves from her chair until the end, I was unable to see any of her facial expressions or body language.

The staging suggests that the action and concerns of the play should bleed directly into the audience. The promotional material describes the show as “immersive,” employing “trauma-informed practices” to ensure everyone’s safety. And there are, in this age of triggers, plenty of potentially triggering moments in the play: references to child sexual abuse, pornography and suicide, threats of physical violence, lots of yelling and cursing. So experts are on hand if you need them. And there’s a post-show facilitated discussion with guest speakers.

But in the end, Meeting the play just didn’t add up for me. None of the characters but Arthur is fully developed; the clashing issues, needs and behaviours of the characters seem contrived within a frame that asks for unadulterated naturalism; ditto Dawn’s uncredentialled leadership of the group. Maybe the point is that, if you have traumas that need addressing, be sure to research the group you’re planning to join before attending a meeting.

 

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