Review - Tainted - Moyo Theatre with GromKat Productions, Toronto

✭✭✭✩✩

by Kat Lanteigne, directed by Vikki Anderson

Moyo Theatre with GromKat Productions, Daniel’s Spectrum, Toronto

September 26-October 12, 2013

“Tainted Blood, Ruined Lives”

Kat Lanteigne’s play Tainted chose the date of its world premiere with a purpose. It opened 20 years after the Royal Commission of Inquiry on the Blood System in Canada, better known as the Krever Inquiry, began its examination of the tainted blood scandal. The play has the stated goal of reminding people of what happened so that it never happens again. The story has regained new pertinence since both the federal and Ontario governments are considering whether to let private clinics pay donors for plasma despite the Krever Inquiry which recommended that, except in rare circumstance, Canada should rely only on volunteer donors. Lanteigne’s play is a noble effort, but it is so occupied with cramming information and events into only 100 minutes, that it neglects character development and lacks dramatic tension.

Between 1980 and 1985 at least 2000 recipients of blood and blood products in Canada contracted HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. Between 1980 and 1990 another 30,000 transfusion recipients were infected with hepatitis C. About 8000 of those who received tainted blood are expected to die as a result. The infection of people with tainted blood was Canada's worst-ever preventable public health disaster.

Lanteigne interviewed individuals affected by the tainted blood scandal to understand the impact that it had on ordinary people. To demonstrate that impact she creates the Steele family for the stage. There are the parents Molly (Maria Vacratsis) and Greg (Richard Greenblatt); their three sons, Jeff (Gord Rand), the oldest, Scotty (Alex Furber) the middle son, and Leo (Owen Mason), who is much younger than Scotty; plus Jeff’s wife Jacklyn (Claire Calnan) and later Scotty’s fiancée Christine (P.J. Prudat). The three sons are all hemophiliacs (with Factor VIII deficiency) requiring frequent infusions of blood products. In order not to give away too much of the plot, Lanteigne shows how tainted blood infects four of the seven characters, is directly the cause for two deaths and indirected the cause of a third.

The action for the play begins sometime close after 1983, when it was known that HIV could be transmitted sexually and through blood, and ends in 2007. It covers the first awareness that something is wrong with the blood supply in Canada, to the discovery that blood carrying HIV and hepatitis C is knowingly being used in hospitals, through the Krever Inquiry and ending with the results of a trial where the head of the Canadian Red Cross and three doctors involved in the scandal were acquitted of criminal negligence causing bodily harm.

Lanteigne wants to pass on the whole 30-year history of the scandal, but that is far too much for one play. In terms of plot, she wants to demonstrate different ways in which people not in the high-risk groups of gays or drug-users, can be infected and die. She also wants to demonstrate how fear of AIDS leads the Steele family to be socially shunned and how prejudice can cause affected people to deny their symptoms.

Attempting to compress all this into a single play is an ambitious endeavour, but it results in a play where plot developments and information leave little room for character development. Here, Lanteigne finds herself in a bind. On the one hand, she wants the Steele family to be “ordinary” to show how ordinary Canadian were affected. On the other hand, the very ordinariness of the characters makes them not especially distinctive. Other than the fact that the Steeles like to do corny musical productions on occasion, we know next to nothing about them. They are catholic. The father has some kind of blue-collar job. The mother is great at baking pies, gardening and volunteering. Jeff is a lawyer. Scotty goes into finance. Leo has fallen in love with one of his female camp instructors. Jacklyn is a nurse, but in what sort of clinic we never know. Christine is an intern in Scotty’s company in one scene and his fiancée in the next. But this is all we know about them.

Beside this difficulty, there is no dramatic conflict. Lanteigne is so focussed on highlighting the Steeles as her test family, that the primary conflict is between them and the shifting forces of doctors, hospitals, blood suppliers, laws and politicians off stage. Unlike the classic American AIDS play The Normal Heart (1985), there is no direct conflict between those infected and and either the government or the suppliers of the blood. Instead, Lanteigne presents a series of well-written but self-contained scenes where an argument may erupt between family members only to be resolved by the end of the scene. With four infections in such a short time, these scenes tend to become repetitive. Those infected want their infection kept secret; those they tell think everyone should know.

Lanteigne’s “ordinary” family is, of course, not ordinary at all. The probability of these parents having three hemophiliac sons in a row is 1 in 64 and thus primarily a construct Lanteigne creates to provide a series of examples. Only once does she have Molly bring up the topic that she feels Greg blames her for their sons’ tragedy because the Factor VIII gene defect is passed on by the mother. Greg denies this and they make up by the end the of the scene. Yet, this is a question Lanteigne could have explored in order to generate the dramatic tension her play lacks.

We don’t know when Molly knew she was a carrier of Factor VIII deficiency, but she surely would have know after her first child was born. Molly and Greg may be Catholic, but for them to go on to have two more children means they are ignoring the genetics of their situation. Any male child they conceive will have a 50-50 chance of having hemophilia, and if female a 50-50 chance of carrying the defective gene. Lanteigne depicts the Steeles as caring, intelligent parents but not fanatically devout, so, one wonders, why did they go on to have two more children with the knowledge of such a risk? It’s clear that Lanteigne wants the source of the family’s problems to come from tainted blood alone, but she thereby misses the chance to explore the realms of guilt and blame that would naturally arise within Molly and exist between the parents and their children. These kinds of feeling exist when non-life-threatening congenital difference arise. One would think the situation would be even worse for the Steeles.

Moyo Theatre and GromKat Productions have assembled an absolutely top-notch cast, all of whom make the most of the material they have to work with. Lanteigne is careful to give each of the seven actors at least one central moment – Molly when she accuses Greg of blaming her and Greg when he has had enough of a gay-bashing fellow worker. But overall, Lanteigne’s focus is on the three sons. Owen Mason is certainly a find as Leo and easily conveys all the energy and enthusiasm of youth. The actors playing Scotty and Jeff are required to go through a greater emotional arc. Alex Furber masterfully shows how Scotty’s view changes from initial concern to forced indifference arriving finally at barely suppressed rage. Gord Rand shows Jeff move from careless indifference to anger to an unmotivated outburst of bitterness borne of frustration and pain.

Lanteigne is excellent at depicting the quirks of family interactions in times of happiness or mild embarrassment, but is less willing to delve into the deeper psychological and philosophical aspects the family faces. We hear that Molly feels that she won’t be able to bear the death of one of children, but after she has lost more than one she is still coping and we wish the author had shown us how Molly moved from suffering such massive blows to being able to accept the unfairness of life. Almost no time is given to Greg or the sons’ grieving and recovery.

The tainted blood scandal is an important subject and it is amazing that this should be the first play written about it in Canada. Kat Lanteigne deserves credit for taking this topic on. Director Vikki Anderson deserves credit too for drawing such impassioned performances from the entire cast. The tainted blood scandal was so important it is possible that Lanteigne could have achieved more by focussing on only one infection and death and the repercussions within a family. Trying to encompass so many tends not to magnify the issue but dilute our response. After all, even one preventable death caused by the health system meant to sustain life is still one too many.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

For tickets, visit http://regentparkarts.ca.

2013-09-29

Tainted