Reviews 2005
Reviews 2005
✭✭✭✭✩
by Lisa Codrington, directed by ahdri zhina mandiela
Nightwood Theatre with Obsidian Theatre,
Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto
February 16-March 13, 2005
Lisa Codrington’s powerful first play Cast Iron, first seen at the 2002 Fringe Festival, makes a welcome return in a handsome production incisively directed by ahdri zhina mandiela. We meet Libya Atwell (Alison Sealy-Smith), an elderly Barbadian woman now in a Winnipeg nursing home, who tells an unseen visitor the story of the determining event in her life--the outcome of the intense rivalry since childhood between herself and her bossy, outgoing half-sister Gracie. She places the tale in the historical context of seven generations of Barbadians from the time of slave-owners to the present and in the mythical context of her community’s fear of its local bogeyman, the “Red Woman”. It is a tale of envy, guilt, and hope for forgiveness that provides no easy answers to the questions it raises.
Sealy-Smith gives an outstanding, virtuoso performance clearly distinguishing between a wide range of characters, including two men, who change over the course of 40 years. Her dramatic reach encompasses everything from physical comedy and the mimicry of children to the pain of mature lives haunted by tragedy. The play is written entirely in the Bajan (Barbadian) dialect. For anyone willing to pay the close attention this demands, the ear soon adapts and comes to relish the poetry Codrington finds in its distinctive rhythms.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2005-02-24.
Photo: Alison Sealy-Smith. ç2005
2005-02-24
Cast Iron