About the Play:

The Weekend Healer is a full-length drama by Bryden MacDonald. Lindalou is a loving but unconventional mother. Her sensitive, 16-year-old son Curtis is more like a brother to her since they're only 15 years apart in age. Lindalou's estranged mother Betina is focused only on appearances and is willfully blind to the suffering of those around her. When Curtis disappears, Lindalou and Betina fall slowly to pieces, revealing secrets almost too dark to contemplate.

The Weekend Healer is the story of a woman and her mother, and the family crisis that ensues when the woman's teenage son disappears. On a Friday morning in a "frighteningly well-groomed living room" in the Toronto suburb of Scarborough, Lindalou Carmichael, 31, is packing up to return to Cape Breton after visiting her mother, Betina, for the first time in five years. Mother and daughter have turbulent relationship, exchanging refrains of put-downs as a way of avoiding speaking and listening to each other. Lindalou's 16-year-old son, Curtis, is as much a brother to her – "We grew up together," she says. When Curtis steps out for a pack of cigarettes and does not return, the young mother fears the worst. His disappearance is the catalyst for a harrowing weekend of hysteria and emotional upheaval. Lindalou's blistering, smart-mouthed anger wears down to a paralytic terror, while Betina's blinkered sense of reality, like the plastic cover on her sofa, is ripped away. The Weekend Healer asks us to question the nature of family, of that much-proffered placebo "traditional family values," and of what mothering and fathering are all about.

The Weekend Healer premiered in 1994 at Factory Theatre in Toronto, with later productions staged at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre (affectionately known as "The Cultch"), and Neptune Theatre in Halifax.

Cast: 2 female, 1 male

What people say:

"…MacDonald has a [rare] gift – the ability to write with passion and detachment. He creates messed-up characters but does not judge them, draws desperate situations without melodrama. This gives his play a blistering clarity…." — NOW

"Playwright Bryden MacDonald has brought to life three unforgettable characters and given them a story that is tragic and horrific. Watching their lives unravel in ... The Weekend Healer is akin to witnessing to a slow-motion car accident – it will leave you shaken and raw. But it is a story so beautifully written ... that although you may want to, you will not be able to turn away." — The Coast (Halifax)

About the Playwright:

Bryden MacDonald is a Canadian playwright, director, dramaturge, and teacher. He has directed more than 40 professional theatre productions. He has taught and coached students at The National Theatre School of Canada, McGill University and Dalhousie University. He has conducted workshops or been artist-in-residence or guest artist at a number of theatres and festivals across the country, including The National Theatre School, Playwrights Workshop Montreal, Mulgrave Road Theatre, Neptune Theatre, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, and The Stratford Festival.