Reviews 2018
Reviews 2018
✭✭✩✩✩
by Helen-Claire Tingling, directed by Jillian Rees-Brown
The Living Will Company, Toronto Fringe Festival, Factory Theatre Mainspace, Toronto
July 6-15, 2018
Helen-Claire Tingling’s would-be exposé of Ontario’s health-care professionals’ arrogance is biased and confused in its arguments and tedious as drama.
The 79-year-old patriarch Wilfred King (Bill MacDonald) has made a standard living will asking for no heroic measures to resuscitate him should he be incapacitated. When Wilfred comes down with shingles and then injures himself in a fall, he has to be hospitalized.
After Wilfred refuses rehydration, Wilfred’s doctor (Jill Niedoba) calls a family meeting. She and Wilfred’s younger son Galen (Abraham Asto) agree that rehydration will allow Wilfred to make clearer decisions. Galen’s three siblings are outraged at any intervention. Through unknown means (illegal in Ontario) Tingling has the doctor override the power of attorney of the older son Jake (Peter Nelson).
Shingles is not a fatal illness, yet we keep hearing that Wilfred is dying. Without telling us what he's dying of, Tingling expects us to take Jake’s side against the doctor. Worse, Tingling demonizes Wilfred’s doctor by having her state, “All geriatric cases are mental cases” as if that were not an extraordinarily aberrant viewpoint.
The script desperately needs an editor to remove all the repetition and everyday minutiae that weigh it down. The actors give passionate performances, especially Andrea Davis and Asha Vijayasingham as Wilfred’s daughters, but none project enough to be heard clearly over the Factory Theatre’s air-conditioning.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in NOW Magazine on July 10, 2018.
Photo: Andrea Davis as Annie and Bill MacDonald as Wilfred. ©2018 Matthew Sarookanian.
For tickets, visit https://fringetoronto.com.
2018-07-10
Living Will