Theatre Preview
Cherish
Theatre: Northern Light Theatre
Directed by: Trevor Schmidt
Starring: Nadien Chu, Sue Huff, Brad Loucks, Richard Meen
Where: The Third Space, 11516 103rd St.
Running: Tonight through May 11
Tickets: 471-1586 or Tix on the Square (420-1757)

"I'm back with my people," says Sue Huff happily. "I didn't realize how much I've missed them."
Huff is talking about actors (and by implication their inlaws, directors, playwrights, designers). "Actors speak the same language," she declares.

Cherish is the title of the four-hander (by award-winning New Zealander Ken Duncum) opening tonight in the Northern Light season. And "cherish" is exactly how the Edmonton thesp-cum-writer is reacting to her recent return to the land of rehearsals and director's notes and wig-fittings, a land which is, after all, her natural home.

Huff, whose appearances on Edmonton stages are intermittent and welcome (most recently True Grid and Closer and Closer Apart), cheerfully concedes that actors are a little more flamboyant, well, louder than the rest of the world. This became patently clear after the October municipal election, she laughs. Huff is the only public school trustee, one feels confident, who rehearses in a theatre all day -- with interruptions to return calls from parents -- and goes to trustee meetings by night.

Cherish is "such a return to What I Do," she says, of an intricate domestic and professional narrative that includes theatre, school trustees, parenting (she has two kids, 13 and 10), and actor/teacher husband Kevin Tokarsky. "Acting makes me more awake and alert," she says emphatically. Having kids, and the nexus of complex feelings that entails, are central to Cherish, she thinks.

The central conundrum is that two same-sex couples find themselves in an escalating surrogate-parent battle. Jesse (Nadien Chu) and Maeve (Huff) each have a daughter by Tom (Richard Meen). Now it's Tom and William's (Richard Loucks) turn to be parents and raise a child; that's the agreement. But the pregnant Jesse finds herself unable to countenance giving up her impending baby. Litigation may well ensue. Did I mention that Tom's partner is a contract lawyer?

Duncum, a well-known playwright and screenwriter in his native New Zealander, doesn't sell any of the four points of view short. "Every character is right," says Huff. "And every character is desperately wrong at the same time."
Contracted last spring by Schmidt, Huff wasn't sure in advance which woman she'd play. "By the time I finished reading, I knew it had to be Maeve," she says. Jesse is the instantly likable one of the pair; Maeve is the prickly, non-conciliatory, awkward one.

To the casual observer of Huff herself, this doesn't seem the obvious fit. But Huff, a friendly, outgoing, sunny sort with an inherently trustworthy look about her, begs to differ.

"I guess it's the sense of being the outsider. My dad was in the military; we were always on the move," says Huff, who was born in Bermuda and who's lived everywhere from Inuvik to Ottawa. "I was always the new kid on the outside wanting to be inside, always forming relationships and breaking them."

As Huff analyzes it, Maeve "doesn't feel secure in many things, in the world." Huff beams. "It's a rich script; there's always more to explore. Luckily, everyone else in the cast feels the same way."

If Cherish has things to reveal about the sexual permutations of the contemporary family, its primary power, thinks Huff, is insights into the bond between parent and child. "It's the best script I've ever read about being a parent," she declares. "The extent to which you'll go to support, to protect your child. ... You'll give up your right arm, literally. It's not even a choice, it's so overwhelming, so primal. That's why the people (in this play) are driven to such extremes."
"My own kids have broadened me," she says. "They've made me try things I'd never have tried. Made me feel things I'd never have felt."

As for wearing hair she's never worn, that's the responsibility of Huff's theatre family, led by Schmidt, who's directing and designing the production. Come tonight, the quintessential blue-eyed long-haired blond will be disguised, or reborn, in a short black wig and heavy glasses. "I came home wearing them, and my dog went ballistic!"