TORONTO - For playwright George F. Walker, it's a little like riding a bicycle -- something he does so well that he can pick it up after a 10-year hiatus and simply ride away.
Which is precisely what he's done in a new work titled And So It Goes, which opened Thursday on the Factory Theatre's mainstage, under the playwright's direction -- thus ending a decade long, self-imposed exile from the stage.
While Walker's skill and balance appear to be undiminished, he's a little more tentative when it comes to traversing the emotional tightrope on which much of his earlier work was balanced, contenting himself to pedal along a gentler terrain that is more forgiving of life's little spills.
That's not all that has changed in Walker's world. His new play is marked not only by an episodic bleed-over from an impressive second career as a television writer, but by a subtle shift in focus as well.
After years of opening windows to allow his middle-class audience to glimpse the lives of those forced to survive at the very fringes of society, in this new play he opens a window to show that same audience how little separates them these days from those fringes.
We meet Ned and Gwen (played by Peter Donaldson and Martha Burns) shortly after they've reached the top of their middle-class heap and begun the descent down the other side. After years as a successful financial planner, Ned has lost his job at the same time as their family appears to be falling apart.
Grown daughter Karen (fearlessly played by Jenny Young) is trapped in the throes of full-blown schizophrenia, a condition that may or may not have played a role in her brother's decision to fall off the face of his family's earth long before this play began.
Driven to distraction by her daughter's illness, Gwen is contemplating a return to an abandoned career as a teacher of Latin, while Ned explores the ins and outs of a career as a creme-caramel-challenged pastry chef.
For comfort and support, Gwen immerses herself in imaginary conversations with a character the program describes as "Vonnegut ... a writer" played by a rumpled but artfully lovable Jerry Franken. Clearly, it is meant to be the late iconic satirist Kurt Vonnegut Jr., who in Slaughterhouse-Five popularized the phrase that gives this play its title.
As their world slowly crumbles, Ned starts conversing with "Vonnegut" too, buying into a habit that will comfort them when Karen's life takes a tragic twist.
Not that hers is the only one that does, for where Walker once created emotional roller-coasters for his audience, here he takes us on board something more akin to The Screamer -- a hair-raising free-fall with somewhat controlled landing that just might leave you breathless, if not exactly giddy.
But while Walker seems comfortable with this new voice, his directoral approach to it is definitely a little more tentative.
Working on a brooding, beautiful evocation of our city created by designer Shawn Kerwin and lit by Rebecca Picherak, Walker and his talented cast too often content themselves with creating snapshots of this familial tale, instead of the emotional vignettes theatre demands. Too often his characters seem concerned more with talking about their feelings than experiencing them.
In an unfortunate bit of enforced asymmetry, Donaldson traces the arc of Ned's emotional descent with clarity but remains oddly untouched physically, while Burns' Gwen shows the arc of physical deterioration without fully exploring the emotional.
It is easy to embrace a kinder, gentler Walker in the role of playwright, but as a director he has to learn that one of the quickest ways to the heart of a matter is most often right through the jugular.
Even with a few simple reservations, And So It Goes suggests that Walker has not only returned to the stage, he has come home.
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