Working with siblings doesn’t have to be a slog. Just ask Todd Thomson. The Vancouver-based actor is currently onstage in The Patient Hour, written by his sister, Kristen Thomson. Far from being difficult, however, Thomson says the entire experience has been pure joy.

“It’s wonderful,” he says, following a matinee performance. “I get her sensibility –it’s comedic but emotional. I get her… psychic sensibility and … I kind of twig into where she’s going with it on a really sort of innate level. I respect the boldness of what she’s written. I felt like she offered some really wonderful insights anytime I had questions about direction or mood-related things.”

Mood plays a big role in shaping the scenes in the work; it fluctuates between comedy and tragedy, and dances carefully between the two at points. The Patient Hour takes place in a hospital, where Dawn Walker lays comatose and dying; she is watched over and visited by her son, Charles (Thomson) and her daughter, Laura (Waneta Storms), and is also joined at times by her nurse, June (Liisa Repo-Martell) and a mysterious woman from down the hall (Patricia Fagan).

What makes the play unique is the way the main character is never seen, but nevertheless addressed; instead of portraying the decrepit Dawn, the characters address the audience. This unique feature of The Patient Hour makes the audience nearly complicit in the action, as we sit, like the comatose mother, silently observing the world but unable to participate in it. Questions around helplessness and perception are addressed, and even ideas of breaking the fourth wall in theatre are explored.

Thomson says the idea of having the audience as the patient was never a question for his sister. “I don’t think she considered anything else, “he says. “I think from the moment the play was conceived, the woman –the patient, Dawn Walker –was always in the audience. We did a workshop last January, and… we flung a lot of stuff around, but that conceit of having the mother in the audience was never toyed with or altered. It was just part of her idea from the very beginning.”

Technically, Thomson says the cast members still have to have somewhere to consistently look, in order to keep visual continuity. “Fortunately, there is a centre aisle up through the (performing) space, so with (director) Chris (Abraham)’s direction, all agreed what step we would need to look at so eye levels are consistent. Thankfully, for us and audience members, we’re not making any eye contact… but you can still see obviously, through the periphery. It’s interesting to see how people are reacting.”

With The Patient Hour, Thomson makes his debut at the Tarragon; as well as working out of Vancouver, doing theatre, film and television, he also worked in Edmonton, at the Citadel Theatre (in Metamorphoses) and the Manitoba Theatre Centre (in The Shape of Things).  His character in The Patient Hour vacillates between a cloying neediness and a genuine loneliness, and his attraction to June, the nurse tending his mother, goes beyond the merely friendly. Thomson puts Charles’ attraction down to a bit of Florence Nightingale syndrome, but says that on deeper analysis, June emulates the kind of fresh start Charles is hungering after. “The more he finds out about her, the more he likes her –genuinely,” he states. “When he finds out she builds these mobiles of solar systems, that she was a potter, she sold real estate, and now she bathes his mom… what he’s trying to do is include and incorporate her into his life with his mother on an unconscious level.” Charles confesses his mother had always been asking him when he’d find “a nice lady” and it’s this “nice” quality that attracts him to June, even as thirsts for a return of interest that he feels will validate him in his mother’s eyes. “(Dawn) can’t talk but might be able to hear everything being said, so he’s pitching, he’s showing his mom he can be a gentleman and June can ultimately help him deal with the pain of the situation… “

Despite the heavy nature of the content, The Patient Hour still provided some good times between Thomson and his sister. Kristen Thomson, who is also an actor and the writer of the lauded solo show, I, Claudia (that later became a film), was working on the script for The Patient Hour for four years before it finally was ready to be staged. Brother Todd credits his sister’s perfectionist approach, and was supportive in her endeavors from the beginning.

“Kristen’s been at it for a long time, and I’ve been (acting) for twelve or thirteen years,” he says, “and I guess we’ve had this… hope or aspiration to work together, and though she’s in Toronto, I’m in Vancouver, a lot of times… we’re pretty … supportive and dare I say, protective. She had been talking about this play for three or four years, saying ‘I got this play… ‘ and I’m like, ‘You let me know and I will be there. It’s not even a question.’ I really respect her, as a person and performer and writer, and fortunately, there’s no egos involved, it’s just a matter of, ‘Here’s the work, let’s jump in.’”