>>PREVIEW
FAR AWAY
Runs until April 8
Theatre Junction (The Grand Theatre)
Far Away, Theatre Junction’s maiden production in the freshly minted Grand Theatre, is an ambitious and uncomfortable examination of the fears that guide and motivate us.
Written pre-9/11 by London playwright Caryl Churchill, it illustrates the powerful and domineering forces among us who truly believe their actions, however violent, are rooted in a higher morality. It aims to get under our skin and show us the lack of compassion that often results from rabid beliefs and blind faith.
The opening act features a young girl, Joan, who witnesses her uncle savagely beating someone, affecting her so deeply she never fully recovers. Adrienne Smook, who took on the role, says despite the dark undertones of the play, she wanted to bring a sense of hope to the persona.
"I approached Joan from a positive standpoint," says Smook. "It’s not a new thing, religion and war dividing families."
The themes explored in the play are unsettling and disheartening, raising more questions than answers.
"It captures the paranoia that is fed by fear and ignorance," says director Kevin McKendrick.
In keeping with the somewhat bleak outlook Churchill’s work embodies, McKendrick says he read the play around the same time as he read Shake Hands with the Devil, Romeo Dallaire’s account of the genocide in Rwanda. He says it made him think very deeply about our struggle for self-preservation and abundant lack of compassion.
"Only 50 years after the Holocaust, we watched 800,000 people be killed in Rwanda in 100 days. We watched and did nothing," he says. "What is it about the human condition that allowed this to happen?"
Despite the disheartening elements in the play, McKendrick says there is some biting humour.
"There’s more comedy in this play than you might think," he explains. "But that comes at the expense of humanity. It should give us pause."
He also says working in the new space of the Grand, with all its bells and whistles, is a welcome challenge and he’s eager to show audiences what can be done with it.
The similarities to the current state of world affairs can be drawn from the work, adds Smook. "Everyone on the planet is different. When you have these conflict situations, everyone thinks they’re doing the right thing."
"If the audience doesn’t leave thinking and talking about this, then we’ve missed our mark," McKendrick says. "There is hope in that the human spirit is trying to persevere. The question is – is it too late?" |
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