Review
SAVING GRACE
Foxglove Theatre Productions
Starring Anne-Marie Leigh, Len Harvey, Erin Millar, Duane Jones and Caroline Buzanko
Written by Leanne Padmos and Anne-Marie Leigh
Directed by Leanne Padmos
Runs until December 20
Pumphouse Theatres
Saving Grace, a new play by Foxglove Theatre Productions, has all the hallmarks of one of those TV movies of the week. It’s an exposé of an outrageously abusive American treatment centre for problem teens, based on the real experiences of a young Calgary woman who spent time there. And, like the better TV movies, it makes for compulsive viewing despite its dramatic limitations.
Grace Fielding (not her real name) is handed over to the centre, located near New York City, after her exasperated single mother has given up trying to steer the rebellious 14-year-old away from drugs and promiscuous sex. The facility, run by an unseen psychologist called Dr. Mallard (who is, as the pseudonym implies, a quack), takes the tough-love concept to the extreme. The kids are bullied, shouted at, penalized for the smallest infractions and forced into a punishing routine of endless group therapy and paperwork. They’re deprived of food and sleep and restricted in their contact with their families. It’s like a cross between prison, boot camp and a religious cult, complete with the classic cult trappings – a leader whose wisdom is never questioned, a private jargon and no room for independent thought.
Mallard’s method, meanwhile, is a 12-step program gone berserk, with the teens continually losing what little ground they’ve gained due to the fascistic rules. Everyone talks hopefully of "graduating," but progress seems almost nonexistent and the few who’ve successfully jumped through the endless hoops appear to have stayed on as employees.
Where the play departs from the standard TV drama is in its sporadic use of monologues addressed to the audience – Grace tells her story to us, and other characters occasionally unburden themselves in soliloquies – and in its backwards storytelling. Act 1 covers Grace’s seven soul-destroying years in the centre, while Act 2 is a flashback to the three years leading up to her treatment – a structural choice which playwrights Leanne Padmos and Anne-Marie Leigh seem to have made to drive home how extreme the "cure" has been in contrast with the problem. Grace does need guidance, but not the kind this rehab provides, where the deprivation and self-loathing fall just short of hair shirts and flagellation.
Running two and a half hours, Saving Grace is too long (the first act especially needs editing), while the minor characters are stereotypes and the writing sometimes descends to the level of earnest clichés and instructional videos. But the story is both fascinating and shocking enough to overcome such weaknesses and Foxglove’s five-member cast delivers committed, convincing performances.
Leigh is an excellent Grace, giving the older character the sturdy sanity of a survivor and skilfully embodying a mercurial young teenager in the second part. Erin Millar, as the mother, and Len Harvey, as various young men in Grace’s life, are suitable types but never move beyond the two-dimensional. Duane Jones is allowed more depth as one of the centre’s hard-ass counsellors, who turns out to be wracked with doubts about the program, and Caroline Buzanko is scarily accurate as an impressionable girl brainwashed into a stone-faced convert of the Mallard cult.
Padmos’s direction is sometimes awkward and, at one point (a stylized depiction of Grace’s deflowering), outright embarrassing, but otherwise her no-frills staging moves the story along.
Happily, the real treatment centre on which this play is based was shut down in 1999 and the real-life model for Dr. Mallard has been successfully sued by his former clients and is no longer practising. But there are still treatment centres using similar abusive methods in the U.S., Canada and abroad. If nothing else, Saving Grace will serve as a caveat emptor to the parents of troubled teenagers who are considering therapeutic options. |
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