In the touch of a hand, a window on the world opens: Casey and Diana at the Citadel, a review

By Liz Nicholls, .ca

At the big, expansive heart of Nick Green’s Casey and Diana is a haunting mystery. Where does hope come from, really? What form can it possibly take, in the final countdown of life?

To help support .ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

Green’s exquisitely crafted play, heart-wrenching and surprisingly funny, is inspired by the real-life story of Princess Diana’s 1991 visit to Casey House, the pioneering AIDS hospice in Toronto. And in an era when AIDS patients were routinely shunned, abandoned by their fearful families, exiled from human contact, “little things, the tiny, simple things,” like presence and the touch of an ungloved hand by a compassionate, attentive princess, became momentous. Shy Di’s act of public defiance against the stigma of the disease made headlines around the world.

Casey and Diana takes us to Casey House during the week leading up to her visit. And the impending occasion is a complicated, often comical, challenge for the residents, the head nurse, an excitable volunteer — and a treasure trove for connoisseurs of gallows humour. For one thing (to cut to the chase), can the residents manage to defy the odds, and stay alive for a week? For another, “my god, what to wear!” as resident Thomas (Nathan Cuckow) declares, looking at his hospice pjs in mock horror.

The performances in Lana Michelle Hughes’ Citadel/ Alberta Theatre Project co-production, are rich and detailed. And in the case of Emily Howard’s Diana, who has mastered the classic Diana listener’s head tilt, and the little Diana smile/grimace combo, an icon of compassion who glides in and out of the play on her kitten heels (costumes by Rebecca Roon).

Nathan Cuckow and Emily Howard in Casey and Diana,m Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

“People don’t die in situations like these; they take a breath and proceed,” declares the gay wiseass Thomas (Nathan Cuckow), a Diana devoté and a veritable gold mine of tossed-off showbiz references, who has somehow outlived four or five roommates. His pep talk to his fellow residents pre-Diana includes the battle cry “We are going to make it!” as he hauls his butt painfully out of bed and assumes the vertical by way of example.

The bold, vivid, tragically funny performance by Cuckow is a career high for an actor we alas rarely see onstage these days. He creates a fascinating multi-layered character, all jaded snarly gay wit on the surface — cracking jokes, flourishing irony like a flotation device with pom-poms over deep currents of sadness, anger, and terror.

Josh Travnik and April Banigan in Casey and Diana, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

Thomas is a veritable Rough Guide to gay Toronto, its cruising locales and greasy spoon diners. And his new roommate André, young, hostile, and scared, who’s arrived at Casey House without anyone knowing, or caring, where he is, resists Thomas’s conversational largesse, but he can’t hold out forever. In a fine performance Josh Travnik plays him with a sardonic streak that just barely covers his lonely fear, and a practised lack of sentimentality about rejection that is in itself heartbreaking.

And there on death’s door, the pair — one a battle-scarred veteran with a gift of the gab and the other an amusingly sullen, taciturn young newcomer, develop a subtle rapport that’s one of the engaging achievements of Hughes’s production.

In a performance with a lovable bounce, April Banigan plays a well-meaning, unfailingly chipper volunteer with boundary issues who’s the butt of their jokes. She’s arrived to help at Casey House, as a kind of self-therapy following the death of her best friend from AIDS. She has boundary issues, as the cliché goes.

Nathan Cuckow and Norma Lewis, Casey and Diana, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

Norma Lewis is compelling as Vera the head nurse, who’s grounded and matter-of-fact in her compassion, a woman with a steel backbone who knows how and when to hug. The most problematic character is Thomas’s aggressive, histrionic sister Pauline (Helen Knight), at Casey House to atone for shutting her brother out of her life. Her scenes are the only ones in Casey and Diana you might feel are a bit over-extended and hammered home.

Thomas and André’s Casey House room, in Hanne Loosen’s design, seems rather distant and lost on the Maclab stage. The characters have to walk considerable distances to enter and exit, and rarely occupy the downstage among us in the big thrust theatre. Opening the window on the world, which is in a sense what the story of Casey and Diana is all about, is a telling capture, though, in Hughes’s staging: the little stained glass window is small, but dead centre. And far above it float heraldic banners. Whittyn Jason’s subtle lighting plays along the shifting frontier between hospice reality and the dreams and hopes that Diana’s impending visit ignites.

Ah yes, hope. To return to the question of hope, in the borderland between life and death where playwright Green finds a poetic mystery. “A faint, warm ringing in your ears,” proposes Thomas in the opening scene where his hilarious conversation with Diana, a detailed analysis of her fairytale wedding, turns out to be an extended monologue.

At the end of life, the road map of mortality is measured in minutes. And a week, measured out incrementally as seven days, is a huge challenge. Diana and the play tell us that it’s to be found in the “little things,” the tiny units of human connection, the warmth of touch, a hand held. And that “faint, warm ringing in your ears,” perfectly re-created in Allison Lynch’s excellent score, is the sound of someone listening.

Casey and Diana will grab your heart and open your mind. Take a breath, grab your Kleenex, and get yourself a ticket.

REVIEW

Casey and Diana

Theatre: Citadel Theatre and Alberta Theatre Projects

Written by: Nick Green

Directed by: Lana Michelle Hughes

Starring: April Banigan, Nathan Cuckow, Emily Howard, Helen Knight, Norma Lewis, Josh Travnik

Where: Citadel Maclab Theatre

Running: through April 26

Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820