DUBAI: Don’t be misled by the fact that “Wayward” is the creation of Canadian comedian and actor Mae Martin. This is not a comedy, but an eerie thriller set in the early Noughties in a creepily off-kilter, verdant small town in Vermont called Tall Pines — a name whose echoes of David Lynch’s early-Nineties cult classic “Twin Peaks” seems unlikely to be a coincidence.
Martin plays Alex, a cop who has moved from Detroit to Tall Pines with pregnant partner, Laura (Sarah Gadon), who is herself a graduate of the town’s central focus, an academy for “troubled” teens run — and founded — by Evelyn Wade (Toni Collette), an unsettlingly weird woman whose life goal of enabling kids to bypass the intergenerational trauma passed down by their parents involves techniques that are unlikely to be sanctioned by any sane society. But Tall Pines isn’t a sane society, populated as it mainly is by graduates of Tall Pines Academy.
A parallel plotline follows two teenage best friends from Toronto: Laura (Alyvia Alyn Lind) — a wrong-side-of-the-tracks kinda gal who dabbles in drugs and is dealing with the death of her sister, and Abbie (Sydney Topliffe) the more strait-laced of the two, whose friendship with Laura has scared her strict parents enough for them to have her sent to the academy. When she discovers this, Laura sets out to rescue her, but ends up incarcerated too.
The atmosphere of general not-quite-rightness is set up early on — a slight over-eagerness on the part of the natives to welcome Alex; the cult-y décor, hierarchy and activities of the academy; Evelyn’s assumption of a mother’s role with Laura… But Laura seems happy to be back, and, at first, there’s nothing quite concrete enough for Alex to be able to fully justify jumping in the car with Laura and getting out of there. That soon changes. But by then, it’s already too late.
“Wayward” has plenty of faults: The characterization, especially of the teenagers, is often clunky and the plot twists don’t always work — sometimes confusing rather than propelling the story. But the show’s ambition should be lauded — it’s tackling “big” topics in an entertaining, engaging way. And Collette gives a performance that’s compelling, charismatic and repellent all at once, making Evelyn such a great creation (credit to Martin too, for that) that she saves the show from mediocrity.
