Four Minutes Twelve Seconds: blaming the Leafs
26 Apr 2024 - Photos by Dahlia Katz

"This isn't The Lion King. This is Scarborough," quips matriarch Di when one of her husband David's speculations about revenge and family feuding becomes overly melodramatic. The joke is that we all know that Scarborough is more melodramatic and potentially dangerous than any Disney animation or musical with puppets. And besides Di is about to dial her dire speculations beyond the intensity of the live action remake. It all begins when Di finds bloodstains on her son Jack's shirt. An "expensive" shirt. David has a perfectly reasonable explanation but Di can always tell when he is lying, so she probes further. Because Di is protective of Jack, she is a fixer just left of being a Karen, and whatever has happened, she wants to make it right. To restore the perfect family that they appear to be. As Four Minutes Twelve Seconds explodes into myriad twist and turns, that perfection is stripped away to reveal a sad and scary reality that just may be beyond even Di's formidable powers of persuasion and coercion to fix.

Playwright James Fritz ingeniously uses the rhythms and tropes of a sitcom to tackle topics that are too controversial, difficult and adult for the television genre to handle. As Di and David bicker and unravel the clues of just what happened, the laughs are plentiful and hearty. As the plot grows darker and edgier, the laughs are more searing and painful. We are shown emphatically that sports bars and the Toronto Maple Leafs are bastions and instigators of toxic masculinity. It's true, and it's funny, but it's a punchline that hurts. Megan Follows's Di is complex. She is determined to be fair and open-minded but her need to protect her son is paramount. Until the evidence shifts and she escalates from a caring mother to a chilling character fresh from a Greek or Shakespearean tragedy. The pathway that Fritz gives Di is a shaky one requiring the character to make several leaps of non-logic that the audience must swallow without question. Follows gives Di the humanity and depth to accomplish that. And the unique ability to be empathetic and horrific in the same breath. 

David initially seems to exist as a foil for Di's kinetic flailing. Sergio Di Zio (Rockabye, Between Riverside and Crazy) is a surface of wide-eyed understanding and compassion, but beneath there is something twitching and scratching. Di Zio gives a flawlessly responsive performance modulated to Di's dramatics—one never doubts that this is a long term loving couple used to bickering to find solutions—so that when his composure cracks open, it has been a long time coming and is wrenchingly terrifying. David is also trying to do well by the son they both love intensely, but his role model skills are off-kilter and the comically pussy-whipped sitcom dad is much more, and much less, than he seems. There is also solid work from Jadyn Nasato and Tavaree Daniel-Simms as clues in the mystery of who is responsible for the damage done in four minutes and twelve seconds. Fritz's dialogue is fast, overlapping, clipped and packed with emotional bombshells that exist between the words. All of the four, with director Mark McGrinder (The Nether, The Normal Heart, Clybourne Park), navigate the torrent of words with a naturalistic flair that makes the plot points that are problematic, and the subject matter that is triggering, smooth.

Di and David's pride is easily lampooned. Jack goes to a private school and his ex-girlfriend Cara (Nasato) was never good enough for him. As if living in Scarborough wasn't bad enough, having their son date a local is tough to accept. They question their parenting, assign guilt, and search for somewhere or someone to blame for what has happened to Jack. It is comical to watch Di and David let their imaginations speculate and assign criminality, until Di turns detective and begins uncovering reality. At that point biblical concepts of revenge and justice become agnostic and the betrayals come thick and fast, with one in particular earning gasps and then shocked and smothered laughter. I should have seen that particular twist coming, but I was too wrapped up in the rapid-fire dialogue and ever-shifting landscape. Follows and Di Zio are fascinating to watch, full of small gestures that register in the intimate space. We are close enough for their humanity to bleed onto our shirts, leaving a little stain of those times we jumped to conclusions, blamed a victim, or trusted the wrong person. Nothing is ever what it initially seems to be and an eye for an eye is an impossible equation.