A tough and tender tale

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This article was published 20/04/2019 (2541 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s very difficult to talk about How It Ends. Not because decisions surrounding death are a divisive issue or because thinking about our own mortality is unpleasant, but because to reveal too much about the performance would be to rob it of its surprising, unsettling power.

Winnipeg playwright/actor Debbie Patterson formed Sick + Twisted Theatre company to create and present work that explores living with a disability. With How It Ends — the final instalment in Prairie Theatre Exchange’s (PTE) Leap Series, dedicated to more experimental theatre — she has crafted a tough and tender work that veers from thoughtful to devastating to goofy without losing a step.

The play — an immersive promenade experience that moves to several venues within the PTE space — opens in the Colin Jackson Studio. A brother (Andrew Cecon) and sister (Johanna Riley) are fishing in a rowboat on an idyllic lake. Their loving sibling banter might seem a tad morbid — they quote Samuel Beckett and Elisabeth Kübler-Ross at each other — but they’re in the twilight of their lives and the end looms large.

Their mother’s death comes up several times; it’s evident she chose to end her life in a way they don’t necessarily agree on. The daughter has spent her life working in palliative care, seemingly in reaction to her mother’s choice.

After a bolt of lightning, audience members are led out of their seats and on a journey through the backstage area, ending up in a softly lit white chamber, seated in a circle.

Clad in a white suit, playwright Patterson appears as a jovial but kind of pushy angel, clanking, ungraceful golden wings attached to her wheelchair. After pointing out that we are all on borrowed time, she encourages the audience to think about how they’d want to go: quickly, without pain or enduring some suffering to get the gift of more time.

Patterson’s broad smile and cajoling tone soften the hard questions she’s asking and mitigate the discomfort we feel when addressing our own biases about what makes life worth living and what circumstances are a bridge too far.

The playwright isn’t afraid to use her disability to remind us we are all only temporarily able-bodied. She challenges the notion that what’s broken should be thrown away and asks us to think about “What makes you, you?”

The decision to stage the action unconventionally and in the round is a canny one. The actors, who incorporate dance as they move about to address all portions of the audience, are looking you right in the eye — often with real people’s words in their mouths — so their messages, which are sometimes at odds, never feel didactic. It makes the audience part of a conversation, rather than an argument, and each actor is so empathetic, the audience is drawn in.

Toronto-based dancer Marie-Josée Chartier plays the mother who chose to end her life with the help of Dignitas, the Swiss non-profit that advocates and offers supports for improving care and choice about the end of life. She is a lovely presence, exuding quiet confidence and calm.

Cecon and Riley, as siblings who took away different things from watching their mother die, both strike a perfect balance between ruefulness and humour.

There are a couple of instances where the dialogue feels more clunky and obvious than artful, but Patterson’s script, which makes use of verbatim interviews she did with a variety of people about end-of-life issues, gracefully addresses ideas of agency and control, of surrendering without giving up.

If this sounds maudlin, it’s anything but. To be sure, there are scenes that are certain to inspire tears, both because of what’s happening onstage and because of our own inescapable connections to death, but How It Ends approaches its big questions with such playfulness and warmth, and such cleverness and ingenuity in its staging, that its final impression is one of uplift and peace.

No matter what your opinions on end-of-life choices, How It Ends feels like a gift, reminding us that life is always ending, but it’s not over yet.

jill.wilson@freepress.mb.ca

Twitter: @dedaumier