Any George F. Walker play, it goes without saying, is going to be a matter of some intensity. Stage one in a space so small the front row viewers could almost reach out and touch an actor and you’ve got a real pressure cooker. Which is pretty much what Fierce is: an hour-long, over-the-top dark fantasy about a crazed drug addict/alcoholic in a court-ordered session with an angry female doctor and counsellor.

As the lights come up and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” fades out, we are in a doctor’s office.

Emmelia Gordon is Jayne, a heavyset character with long, still wet brown hair under a toque, arm in a sling, dressed in prison-issue, dark-green sweats. Marisa Crockett is Margaret (“Maggs” to Jayne) a thin-lipped, hair-pulled-back, uptight, rigid MD whose file folder and notes act as her protective shield.

Injured Jayne has been released from jail after causing a truck to flip when she walked into heavy traffic. Dr. Maggie lost her patience with such patients many appointments ago. Each woman is determined to break the other.

More than a shouting match or a contest of wills, Fierce is wrapped around a tragedy that will only be revealed in the last moments of the show. In the meantime, it’s a wild rollercoaster ride on rails of rapid-fire dialogue that evokes laughter, horror, sorrow and shock in about equal measure.

In the real time of a session with a counsellor, we learn that Jayne is a teacher, a guidance counsellor in fact, who refers to the troubled students she dealt with, including one involved in a murder case audience members will recognize from the news. (“That was one of mine.”) She’s on the attack from the top of the hour.

They squabble; no one wins. “I’m almost certainly right,” says Maggie about Jayne’s situation, “and you’re definitely not.” Jayne is refusing to cooperate with questioning. How did you lose your husband, Maggie wants to know. Jayne answers with thick sarcasm, “We went for a walk in a very dense forest and I lost him.”

Jayne will only comply if she is allowed to ask questions. She’s looked up Margaret’s background and found Margaret has herself been an addict, an orphan and is covering up some serious psychological damage. At one point, Jayne sends the doctor scurrying for the bathroom and takes the opportunity to read Margaret’s notes: “Bullshit! Wrong!,” she shouts, then, shrugging at some comment, “fine.”

Since both characters are conditioned to lie, Walker’s arc is soon found. They will argue, probe, undermine each other, finally drink vodka out of the bottle and share a joint. And before the lights come down they will tell their buried truths.

Fierce, written in 2016, shares themes with Walker’s Parents Night (2014) and The Bigger Issue (2015) and like many of his previous works underscores the effects of poverty and social ills on basically good people.

Days later, Jayne’s agony and her doctor’s sorry state are still with us, proof that Walker has lost none of his momentum.

Fierce

By George F. Walker

Directed by Wes Berger

A Criminal Girlfriends production at Red Sandcastle Theatre, Toronto, until March 3

Photo of Marisa Crockett (lying down) and Emmelia Gordon by John Gundy