Book review: Waiting Room by Diane Flacks (script)

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Waiting Room

"Waiting Room" is a two-act play by a Canadian playwright Diane Flacks. It is a fictional story which was, nevertheless, inspired by the author’s own experience at SickKids Hospital.

At the centre of the play we have two pairs: Chrissie and Jeremy, young parents, whose baby daughter is suffering from a brain tumour, and Dr. Andre Malloy and his assistant Melissa De Angelo, who are both brilliant and competent but not flawless.

 

Chrissie and Jeremy both struggle with their daughter’s illness in their own ways, alternating between antagonizing and supporting each other. They form uncommon friendships with other parents who visit the hospital as well as medical staff. They spend so much time in the hospital waiting room that they have nicknames for nurses and doctors.

 

Dr. Malloy is not known for his pleasant bedside manner but he is a brilliant and successful surgeon, who unexpectedly finds himself facing his own medical dilemma. He is god-like and uncompromising, much like other similar characters in medical dramas, however, he is brought back to earth and is forced to face his own mortality.

 

I was hooked by the writing from the very beginning. As someone who is both personally familiar with doctors and their peculiar sense of humour as well as cancer treatment, I found this play very true to life. The author’s introductory notes to characters are poignant and made me long to see this play on stage. “Waiting Room” is gripping and heartbreaking as well as heartwarming at times, as it examines humanity and ethics in life and death situations. Although the play deals with terminal disease and is hard to read - let’s be honest here - it is so well-written, that I did not feel crushed by the story as much as I had expected to be.

 

However, if there was one thing that I could change about it, it would have been the epilogue. Even though I do understand why the epilogue was written the way it was written, I still liked Scene 15 as the ending for the play way more.

 

I have received a copy of this play from Playwrights Canada Press in exchange of a free and honest review.

 

Personal rating: 5 stars

 

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Book review: Watching Glory Die by Judith Thompson

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Watching Glory Die

"Watching Glory Die" is one act play written by a Canadian playwright Judith Thompson, who was inspired by the tragic death of nineteen year-old Ashley Smith. Ashley Smith died of self-inflicted strangulation, while being on a suicide watch at Grand Valley Institution for Women. Her death caused many questions and resulted in a legal inquest and criminal negligence charges against the warden and deputy warden. The trial stretched for several years and eventually her death was ruled as a homicide.

The play portrays the injustice and mistreatment of women, and more so the treatment of mentally ill inmates, within the judicial system. The story is delivered from three women’s perspective: a teenaged inmate Grace, who suffers from hallucinations; her adoptive mother Rosellen; and a working-class guard Gail.

 

The cruelty and injustice of everything that Glory is going through is truly jarring to read. Just like Ashley Smith, Glory is initially arrested and imprisoned at the age of fourteen for throwing an apple at the postman. She is systematically abused by the guards, who take her every action as a reason to charge her again and again, increasing her sentence time. Glory spent years in prison and by the time the play takes place, she has been there for five years and is now truly lost in her hallucinations. She talks incoherently, keeps envisioning her birth mother as a crocodile who is going to come and drag her into a swamp; and has self-harm tendencies which eventually lead to her death.

 

The script is less than fifty pages long, but I found even those very hard to read. The injustice of everything that is happening, not only against Glory, but also other women in the play, is hard to swallow, especially since it is not fiction, but reality. It is very powerful play both for its language and its topic, and I encourage you to read it, as it brings the awareness to the treatment of women and mentally ill inmates in prisons. In the words of Gail: “This whole place is fucking crazy. Like the world turned upside down.”

 

It is definitely not the kind of play that would keep you guessing about the ending or that you would want to read over and over again, but it is very important as it serves as a reminder of the issues that still exist in the correctional system.

 

*I have received the copy of this play from Playwrights Canada Press in exchange of a free and honest review.

Personal rating: 4 stars

 

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Book review: Pontypool by Tony Burgess

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Pontypool

I have an unfortunate habit of buying books on a whim, simply because they remind of something else: another book, a TV show, or maybe there is just THAT feeling that I will like this book. Heavens know how many times I was mistaken. Especially, since I am plagued by a chronic aversion to summaries and back cover blurbs. (Meaning, most of the time I have no idea what the book is about until I start reading it. Isn’t it fun? Trying to justify a purchase without reading a book is my personal nightmare.)

I was browsing Arts & Letters section at Indigo, wondering if I might by some chance find anything by Terence Rattigan (even though I knew perfectly well that there were no plays in stock - I am an eternal optimist), when I came across this little play. The name caught my eye for an obvious connection with the author of  A Clockwork Orange, but when I looked at the cover my first thought was - “It is so Welcome to Night Vale - esque!”.

 

I purchased Pontypool after only briefly skimming the back cover (and being appalled at the price of almost $18 for a 50 paged book). I admit that I probably would have left it on the shelf if I hadn’t a bit of money left on my gift certificate. Therefore, I left the store with Pontypool, "Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead" by Tom Stoppard and a dotted Leuchtturm notebook.

 

What was rather unusual about this purchase was that I, the procrastinator of procrastinators, read Pontypool on the same day of purchase. Hooray!

 

Here is a bit of a back story.

 

Pontypool is a script which was originally written for a radio drama and then was turned into a film script only to be eventually produced on theatre stage. It is based on the novel called "Pontypool Changes Everything" which is book 2 in The Pontypool Trilogy. (And ain’t that confusing!) However, I believe you can read the script without really missing out on anything from the trilogy.

 

The copy that I got was published by Playwrights Canada Press in 2015.Tony Burgess is a Toronto born Canadian author and screenwriter. Which made me rather excited as I feel as if I don’t read enough of Canadian authors.

 

Pontypool is set in a small rural town, somewhere in Ontario. The whole story takes place in a radio show studio, which immediately reminded me of Welcome To Night Vale podcast series. The host of the show, Grant Mazzy, may not be Cecil, but the events that develop in that radio station are both unpredictable and weird, and, let’s be honest, a touch scary. We are talking apocalypsis type of scary here, folks.

 

I don’t to say anything else because it is easy to spoil the plot twist (yes, there is a twist), but I will just quote one sentence from the very first page: “Consider the fateful morning Ms. Colette Piscine swerves her car to miss a cat as she goes across a bridge and has to get fished, alive and shivering, out from the drink.”

 

And if this doesn’t make you want to read this little, bizarre script, then just look at the cover. Isn’t it just very Lovecraftian?

 

Personal rating: 4.5 stars

 

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