✭✭✭✩✩

by Michael Miller, directed by Allen MacInnis

Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People, Toronto

February 7-March 1, 2008

Michael Miller's latest play, Touch the Sky, now receiving its world premiere by the Lorraine Kimsa Theatre for Young People is full of ideas about freedom and slavery in the ante-Bellum South that would be useful to teach.  This is also the play's central flaw since it seems to move forward not through the interaction of characters but with the purpose of demonstrating various theses.

 

Based on a "conjure tale" from the Carolina coast, the 90-minute play focusses on Belle (Patrice Goodman), daughter of the slave-owner Master Beauregard (Patrick Garrow) and his slave Darmetta (Ngozi Paul) and granted her freedom by her father.  As in a fairy tale Beauregard and his family have been cursed by the Conjure Woman (Karen Robinson), Belle's godmother, never to know love.  Belle has seven freedmen as suitors from whom Beauregard will choose one for her husband.  Yet, as fate will have it, Joshua (Omar Forrest), the one man she loves and who loves her, is Beauregard's slave. 

This could make for potent drama, but Miller is too keen to hammer home his themes.  Slavery equals "no choice" and freedom equals "choice."  The obvious irony is that Belle is "free" but still has "no choice."  The Conjure Woman tells Belle that since she is "free" everything she does is a "choice,” yet when Belle casts aside a magic potion from the Conjure Woman, this action causes her to have no further choices about Joshua.  In the end the Conjure Woman tells us "to believe in magic," but magic makes nonsense of the "choice"/"no choice" opposition.  Given the setting, courage in fighting for one's beliefs would be more to the point. 

Allen MacInnis' direction also causes confusion.  Belle seems quite to like one suitor Caesar (Jamie Robinson), whom we discover she does not like, and appears quite indifferent to Joshua, whom she supposedly loves.  While Goodman tends to underplay her role, there is fine acting from the rest of the cast.  The play is valuable for depicting of the evils of commodifying human beings.  The question of what "freedom" actually is should spark many debates especially if there is a budding determinist or existentialist in the room.  As a play, however, Touch the Sky is ultimately confusing and its bizarre half-and-half conclusion unsatisfying.  

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2008-02-11.

Photo: Karen Robinson and Patrice Goodman. ©2008 Daniel Alexander.