Review: The Lucky Ones, Cam Fuller, Saskatoon Star-Phoenix
April 24, 2015 
Flawed characters find each otherWell, it's not The Notebook.
The Nicholas Sparks tearjerker about a lifetime romance doesn't allude to the Inuit creation myth of Sedna.
The Lucky Ones does. Writer Kelley Jo Burke uses the rather disturbing story of the undersea goddess to poetically describe Enid's unique personality and the way she needs to be off in her own world, much to the frequent dismay of her husband, Marty. He's an obituary writer, of all things. She's - I missed it - an anthropologist? A folklorist?
The play begins with Enid's stroke. After many years of marriage, there are still some things that Marty needs to know, and he's not letting Enid duck out on him without some answers. (Burke doesn't load the deck in her favour with sentimentality but does get the emotional hooks into you by the climactic final speech.)
The new play at Dancing Sky Theatre makes many more demands on the viewer than would a shiny-perfect Hollywood movie.
The characters are not easy to warm up to, for starters. Marty (Sean Hoy) and Enid (Louisa Ferguson) are misfits with traumatic pasts.
Marty spent years tending to an ill mother who told him that as long as he made her laugh, she'd live. The day he couldn't think of anything funny, she died.
Enid's background is even more unsettling, a disturbing tale of sexual identity, parental hysteria and what amounts to torture.
It would be nice to actually like them, but Marty's clinging and insecurities put you on edge and Enid's fragility is unsettling.
You have to approach both gingerly.
This being an Angus Fergusondirected play, you can expect pleasing theatricality and artfully simple solutions to portraying difficult things.
Like, how does a person in a coma participate in a conversation? Or what's the best way to depict lovemaking without it turning into sex-ed?
Live music, another Dancing Sky hallmark, is here performed by Ross Nykiforuk, employing a variety of keyboard sounds (including some notes from Supertramp's Goodbye Stranger at a highly appropriate moment.)
But what really stands out is the acting, from the chemistry which is good, to the memory work which is monumental.
It's hard to believe that it's been seven years since Hoy trod the boards. His every-guy-ness is as warm as always.
And Louisa Ferguson's performance is stunningly accomplished, truly one of the best of the season. She invests completely in the role, fully inhabits this difficult woman and fathoms the depths with convincing emotions.
The Lucky Ones may not be a play you reflexively like but it's one that's impossible not to appreciate.
THE LUCKY ONES
Dancing Sky Theatre, Meacham To May 3, Thursdays through Sundays
