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Winnipeg Free Press - ONLINE EDITION
Dying Hard
Our Rating: 
Red River College (Venue 11), to July 23
Dying Hard is a heartbreaking indictment of the human toll paid by fluorspar miners in St. Lawrence, N.L., in the 1960s. In her one-woman monologue, Mikaela Dyke portrays six members of the community, using their own words taken verbatim from Elliott Leyton’s book Dying Hard: The Ravages of Industrial Carnage.
Dyke is a very watchable performer, as she easily changes accents, pieces of clothing or body language to assume the personalities of these victims, or their survivors, and give their first-hand accounts of physical destruction, grinding poverty and palpable pain. Says elderly mining-accident victim Harry Andrews, “Only one guy suffered more than me and that was Jesus Christ.” That the sick or injured miners were so shabbily treated financially by the companies they made rich may be the most shocking of all.
Dying Hard paints a vividly dark portrait of those who worked the mines that widow Rebecca Flynn wished had never opened but that left their mark on the town. She says: “We had a thick graveyard, we had a fat graveyard.”
-- Kevin Prokosh
From the official Fringe Festival program:
Adapted by Mikaela Dyke from the interviews collected for Elliot Leyton's book: Dying Hard: Industrial Carnage in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland
A powerful exploration of the plight of fluorspar miners in Newfoundland in the 1960s. Through the performance of archived interviews, Dying Hard tells the true stories of a community struggling to survive the ravages of industrial carnage.
"[I was] shaken to the core by Dying Hard" - Kate Watson, The Coast
"Brief but intense, if not stilling" - Gordon Jones, The Telegram
Recommended For: General Audience
Length: 60 MIN
Tickets: $10
Discount Tickets: $8 Students, Seniors
Warnings: None
History
Updated on Wednesday, July 13, 2011 at 10:50 AM CDT:
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