Review: Vigil

Marcel Jeannin and Kim Yaroshevskaya (photo: Andrée Lanthier)

Are you dead yet?

Darkness and Lite at The Segal

by Nanette Soucy

In Morris Panych’s Vigil, at the Segal Centre, in co-production with Rideau Vert, we meet Grace, a bed-ridden, silent crone who is besought by a houseguest come to watch over her and tend to her affairs as her life draws to a close.  Kempt, has dropped everything to travel a thousand miles to care for the auntie he spent his tortured childhood wishing he were.  Impatient for his host to kick the bucket, he spends the rest of her life unloading the rage and brimstone of his traumatic childhood in the care of an alcoholic father and a mother who desperately wanted a girl. Before Kempt pesters Grace to death, we encounter a dramatic plot twist.