✭✭✭✭✩

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.