Live and in person at the Streetcar Crowsnest Theatre, Produced by Crow’s Theatre, 345 Carlaw Ave. at Dundas, Toronto, Ont. Plays until February 9.
Written by Liz Appel
Directed by Chris Abraham
Set and props by Joshua Quinlan
Costumes by Ming Wong
Lighting by Imogen Wilson
Sound by Thomas Ryder Payne
Video designer, Nathan Bruce
Cast: Ari Cohen
Sochi Fried
Richard Lee
Rachel Leslie
A bold, bracing play about language, race, identity, being a flawed human and consequences when they screw-up. The play is vibrant with all sorts of surprises. Most work, some don’t but the effort is remarkable. Liz Appel is a playwright whose voice I want to hear again.
Definition of “wight”: wight is derived from Old English wiht, meaning “living being, creature”. The related Old Saxon wiht means “thing, demon”.
A synonym for wight: “a human being; `wight’ is an archaic term. synonyms: creature. individual, mortal, person, somebody, someone, soul.”
Pronounced as “White” which in the context of the play can be tricky and apt.
The Story. I’m going to use the theatre’s synopsis of the show with some of my own input:
“It’s Halloween 2024, (in Connecticut), one week before the U.S. election. Anita Knight, a brilliant and ambitious Yale academic, has gathered her closest friends to help her prepare for the job interview of a lifetime. Her husband arrives, late to the party, setting off a chain of events no one sees coming.
In this biting social satire, two couples confront each other and themselves, and no one will ever be the same. As their carefully constructed stories unravel, dark forces threaten friendships, marriages, and perhaps even the fate of humanity itself.”
The Production. The audience sits on the four sides of the theatre with the playing area in the middle. Joshua Quinlan’s set of Anita (Rachel Leslie) and Danny’s (Ari Cohen) stylish kitchen has an island in the middle with a sink, running water, lots of counter space and a shiny floor. Quinlan has also created private pockets of the set—an alcove for the fridge over there, another one on the other side of the stage for a chair by a window. These secret pockets worked a treat in Quinlan’s set of Uncle Vanya for Crow’s Theatre, not so much for Rosmersholm. One is primed to appreciate these secret pockets on a Quinlan set—they are deliberately created to suggest a mystery.
Director Chris Abraham begins the production with a boom, literally and figuratively. A booming sound effect announces the beginning and we better brace ourselves. Kudos to sound designer Thomas Ryder Payne for choosing the right sound to grab one’s attention. The lighting by Imogen Wilson illuminates the floor as startlingly as the sound effect. With each ‘boom’ there is a lighting effect until the production ‘eases’ into the easy, quick banter of Anita and her two guests.
Celine (Sochi Fried) and her husband Bing (Richard Lee) have come over to prepare dinner and to help prepare Anita for the interview. Bing can’t find the pepper and no matter where he’s told to look, they never find it.
Bing and Celine are bickering. Celine is pointed in her comments to him. Bing is easy going to a point. Bing is a colleague of Anita’s at Yale. He’s bright, knows how to read a room and finesse a conversation. He arrived in the U.S from China when he was 17 to study at prestigious schools. Celine, his wife, is white.
Anita wants Bing and Celine to be brutal in their challenging of her presentation to the selection committee. She wants them to draw blood. The salad is made, the dressing poured and tossed. Danny arrives home from court-he’s a lawyer defending a man wrongfully accused and jailed for 22 years.
Initially Danny watches and listens to the conversations of the others, and eats—he didn’t have lunch and he’s hungry. His questions are astute. It’s clear that of all of the characters, Danny’s work as a lawyer does something while the others philosophize and theorize about issues.
In Act I each character does something, unbeknownst to the others, that will have consequences in Act II. As information is revealed, ideas and attitudes expressed, it’s clear these characters are at odds with who knows then, mainly because they don’t listen to each other. They are flawed and human. In the words of Lillian Hellman: “People change and forget to tell each other.” And when the characters discover how much their friend/partner has changed, it’s startling.
Director Chris Abraham puts the characters and the audience through a bracing theatrical exercise as we watch from a distance, sizing up each character, weighing what they say; noting the truth or not, and where our allegiances lay. And it’s to Liz Appel’s keen abilities as a playwright, that we keep up with her observations and arguments.
Liz Appel has written a biting satire that skewers the woke, land acknowledgements, the court system, the academic world and its inequities, personal agendas in relationships and the tyranny of language and how it’s been misused. Her language and arguments for all her characters are laser sharp. She is a playwright who is white, who has written full-bodied characters who are not white with their own issues of race and class. Liz Appel turns the notion of voice appropriation on its head when she writes as clearly about Anita as a black woman of mixed race, as she does about Danny who is perceived as white but does not identify as that, who has his own angst with identity. And she writes as clearly of Bing’s issues as an Asian man with his own inner turmoil. Rather than ‘voice appropriation’ I quote Tomson Highway who called it ‘voice illumination.’ Liz Appel puts us in the heart and mind of all her characters, not just the ones who look like me. The acting from the cast of four is exceptional, emotional, committed, energetic and compelling. The arguments are offered intensely and with rigor.
One might quibble that ‘people don’t talk like that’ as they listen to Danny give a very long monologue that grips you by the throat, about the system, his inner turmoil as a white man with other issues. The arguments from other characters might also be described as “people don’t talk like that.” Well, these characters do. We’ve heard them in our theatres/life as they spill their guts at the many slights they endure; as they try and be as politically correct as possible; as they make language into a vice that can’t express ideas anymore because they are terrified of hurting someone’s feelings. I also crinkled my eyebrows at Danny’s revelation and the timing of it. Perhaps it seemed a bit too contrived and his unravelling in Act II a bit messy. Still lots to chew on.
Comment. Wights is Liz Appel’s professional debut as a playwright. It’s astonishing. She takes no prisoners with her focus on the phoniness in institutions, justice systems, race relations, human relations, communications and language. This is an astonishing debut. More please, soon.
Crow’s Theatre Presents:
Plays until February 9, 2025
Running time: 2 hours, 20 minutes.www.crowstheatre.com
{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }
I’m amazed that Crows is putting on a play by an unproven playwrite. You did say this was her first professional play. Do you know how she got in there? Crows doesn’t accept submissions.
The play was commissioned by Crow’s. The playwright has many commissions as well, even though WIGHTS is her debut. She has submitted work to festivals, I believe. She had to submit the play first in order for it to be produced. When you see it, you will know why they produced it.
If a play is commissioned, by definition that means it was not submitted first, in order for it to be produced. It means the playwright was paid to write it with the understanding that Crow’s would have first right of refusal to produce it. The playwright’s grandmother was Bluma Appel, the since-passed arts patron/philanthropist. I am assuming this is how she got connected with Crow’s, to answer Mike’s question.
She is the child or grandchild of the arts philanthropist Bluma Appel
Four white, left-wing 70-somethings (me, my spouse and two friends) saw Wight the first preview night and to a person gave it a thumbs-down. We’re all habitués of Crows and we agree that this is the first production at the theatre that we couldn’t (and didn’t) recommend. Boiled down, we thought that the play leaned so much on stereotypes (e.g. academics and academic arguments about class, race and colour) that it trivialized the important issues that affect real people every day. It doesn’t work as satire – far too clumsy. Did the performance that you saw end in a zombie apocalypse? Seriously?