With review label

Memories — not the misty, watercolour memories of popular song, but the bitter ones that dog consciousness — overtake the Old Courthouse in Project X’s wintertime stage drama.

You Are Here bears the signature style of Daniel MacIvor, one of Canada’s most critically acclaimed playwrights. It’s a simple story told in minimalist fashion, a blend of monologue and two-handers that looks at life from the shadows.

With a stable of strong, young actors behind it, the X has proven adept at gritty and contemporary drama in the past, but You Are Here left me glaring at the map, wondering where all of this was headed. This had more to do with MacIvor’s character development, I think, than with this particular production, which is well played and imaginatively rendered.

Alison (Harmony Maher) is a celebrity journalist dissatisfied with the shallowness of her subjects, searching for deeper meaning but drifting from one flawed relationship to the next. Her moral compass spinning, she reflects on the course of her life, overturning stone after stone, to make sense of it all.

“Retrospective is everything,” she declares at one point, transposing a journalistic technique on her own, meandering life.

From her opening monologue, Maher takes the audience by the hand into a post-modern world of chaos and confusion. The set installation by Amy Baskin is the most ambitious stage design to date at the Old Courthouse, transforming the main courtroom into a stark, white memory chamber. The sole stage prop is a chair, but scattered mementos of Alison’s life line the courthouse stairwell. Cards bearing tiny mirrors are taped to the back of each seat in the audience. They read, “You are here.”

The other actors —partners in Alison’s failed relationships, celebrity subjects and professional acquaintances — emerge from corridors of the chamber as though summoned from the back of her mind.

Her trajectory is tragic — alcoholism, miscarriage, exploitive relationships. Maher’s torment is convincing, and she earns sympathy in the first act. Alison, however, is an inconsistent character. Her self-confidence and intellect contradict her helplessness, the partners she chooses and even the language they use. This adds up to a big plausibility question.

At the same time there is a tense emotional intimacy to You Are Here that is satisfying against the backdrop of an often superficial world. If you savour the light beyond the darkness, follow the signs. The play continues, 7:30 p.m. nightly, until Jan. 30.