Randie Parliament's Mamma's Boy.

Familial connections — the chosen ones among artists and friends and the obligatory ones offered by blood relations — are what drew Wes Berger to the two plays he’s directing this month. And like so much that family connections require, the demands have been a touch overwhelming.

Last fall, Berger — a writer, director and actor who’s appeared on stage and screen and in an Emerald Nuts Super Bowl commercial with Robert Goulet — saw the Toronto debut of Ghost Light Projects, the brainchild of Vancouver import Randie Parliament. After the shows, an over-the-top one-two punch of Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Debbie Does Dallas: The Musical, Berger approached Parliament to offer his praise. They later discovered they were colleagues. Like many Toronto theatre folks who need flexible employment between gigs, they worked at the Mirvish TicketKing office. So they got to talk some more. Parliament asked Berger point-blank what kind of director he was. Months later, Berger cannot easily recall his answer, but it must have been the right one — Parliament asked him to direct Mamma’s Boy, a play Parliament himself had written and would also star in.

Berger said yes. And then, somewhere along the way, he also agreed to direct a second play, Larger Than Life: The Musical, which will run in repertory with Mamma’s Boy for three weeks, starting May 21. Rehearsals for both are in the same building, often at the same time.

“I’ll go to the actors in one show, give them an assignment and then go rehearse with the other show, then run back and see how they’re doing,” says Berger. Having his fiancée, Sarah Murphy-Dyson, work as associate director has helped him be in two places at the same time. As well, Berger’s theatre-world family is further entrenched with the participation of Sky Gilbert in his first on-stage role in years as the father in Mamma’s Boy. Gilbert just directed Berger in last month’s Reconciliation at Buddies in Bad Times.

“During rehearsals, he was talking about acting again and I mentioned this project and he actually said yes,” says Berger. “I’m going to torture him even more than he tortured me.”

All the easygoing professional kinship doesn’t take the edge off Parliament’s uneasy Mamma’s Boy, however; the story of a young man who returns home to take account of his past is drawn from Parliament’s own family life and though it has moments of humour, it’s full of exposed nerves and dark secrets. Berger can relate to the lead character’s journey to become his own person: the oldest of four kids, it’s taken the director years to step back from being the surrogate father in his own family. But he’s not sure he’d take his own mother to Mamma’s Boy.

“There are just so many missed opportunities for the people in this play,” says Berger. “It’s very affecting emotionally, which is why I wanted to do it.”

As something of an antidote to Mamma’s Boy, Larger Than Life presents the creation of an ersatz family, born out of proximity rather than a shared gene pool. Its premise certainly sounds like the set-up for a jolly joke, and something Berger could take his mother to. Five disparate women — a soccer mom, a business exec, a kooky single, a butch lesbian and a vegan — find themselves together at a white elephant sale in a church basement. They unload their personal baggage and bond through song.

First performed in Vancouver in 2002, it’s something of a Menopause: The Musical compared to Mamma’s Boy’s Glass Menagerie. Parliament has certainly traded in the complementary programming of Hedwig/Debbie for a more perverse coupling this time around. Berger seems up for the challenge — and consumed by it.

“I find myself dreaming about the plays. My Larger Than Life dreams are soothing. My dreams about Mamma’s Boy are… more nightmarish.”