Cold Comfort

Cold Comfort is the third in a quartet of plays that Jim Garrard calls “Bondage Plays for My Country.” The play could take place anywhere along the Trans-Canada Highway, but it happens to be set in Saskatchewan, the geographic centre of the country. There are three characters in the play: Dolores, a fifteen-year-old girl who wants to know more about the world than what the window and the household TV can tell her; Floyd, her father, with whom she lives in an abandoned service station, whose paternal misdeeds form the sinister backdrop for the play’s action; and Stephen, the proverbial travelling salesman, who unwittingly stumbles into this complex relationship and finally becomes victim to it. Cold Comfort was first produced by 25th Street Theatre in Saskatoon; then at the Salon Theatre at the Toronto Theatre Festival. It was revived in Toronto by Theatre Passe Muraille; and has been produced in Vancouver at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre.