Reviews 2017
Reviews 2017
✭✭✭✩✩
written and directed by Michelle Thoms
s&m productions, Toronto Fringe Festival, Tarragon Theatre Mainspace, 30 Bridgman Ave.
July 7-16, 2017
Michelle Thoms’s earnest play is so dedicated to teaching its audience about injustice in the Canadian prison system that it often forgets to be dramatic. Thoms bases her central character Tracey (Kelechi Ofoha in a raw, emotional performance) on the real case of Ashley Smith (1988-2007), who due to a minor conviction spent nearly three years in solitary confinement before she committed suicide.
The United Nations classifies more than 15 days in solitary as “torture.” We learn such facts about Smith and about prisons because Thoms has them projected between scenes on an onstage screen.
The pity is that these facts themselves are often more effective in making Thoms’s points than Thoms’s schematic play. Though the show is focussed on Tracey, Thoms also illustrates that the system harms prison workers as well as prisoners. The play’s best scenes are those between Tracey and her nurse (a sympathetic Marnie Wohl-Bennett) who struggles in vain to remain detached.
Here Thoms most fully treats the characters as complex psychological beings rather than instructive examples.
Show length: 60 min.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review appeared in NOW Magazine on July 8, 2017.
Photo: Marnie Wohl Bennett and Kelechi Ofoha. ©2017 Catherine Cava.
For tickets, visit https://fringetoronto.com.
2017-07-08
On The Inside