Reviews 2005
Reviews 2005
✭✭✭✭✩
by Tanya Smith, directed by Dian Marie Bridge
Carly St. Theatre, Toronto Fringe Festival, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto
July 7-16, 2005
Alena, a white female university student wants to visit the the woman whose donation established the scholarship holds. She is surprised to find the donor is Effie, a bedridden African-American woman in a nursing home. Playwright Tanya Smith has created a wonderfully nuanced character study in Effie and Barbara Barnes-Hopkins plays her with power, dignity and great feeling. Otherwise, Smith has trouble making this character study dramatic. The addition of a loud-mouthed nurse (Quancetia Hamilton) with a sad story is formulaic and Smith unnecessarily sentimentalizes the action. Still, no one should miss a performance as moving and truthful as the one Barnes-Hopkins gives.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2005-07-14.
Photo: Tanya Smith and Barbara Barnes-Hopkins. ©2005 Steve Payne.
2005-07-14
Thank You.