Few titles are as chaotic, curious or simply ingenious (not to mention long) as “There is Violence and There is Righteous Violence and There is Death or, The Born-Again Crow.” If the material of this play, however, never quite lives up to its name, that’s to be expected. I’m not sure anything could.
But Caleigh Crow’s new work, which opened Thursday at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre in a co-production with Native Earth Performing Arts, still offers us something to celebrate: a truly original gothic drama that’s filled with wit, heart and some obligatory angst.
“The Born-Again Crow” begins — as so many gothic works do — rather innocuously. Set in the suburbs of an unnamed Canadian city, Shannon Lea Doyle’s scenery depicts a run-of-the-mill backyard, complete with lawn chairs, planters and an all-too-perfect picket fence.
Beth (Tara Sky), a young Indigenous woman, has crashed back home with her single mother Francine (Cheri Maracle) after she was fired from her job as a store clerk, following a very public meltdown.
The first half of Crow’s play feels, more or less, like a traditional domestic drama, a study of suburban ennui. Beth’s relationship with her mother is, if not entirely broken, somewhat distant.
Meanwhile, her former boyfriend, Tanner (Dan Mousseau), has inconveniently moved next door. He’s a temperamental, prying presence. And he has some ulterior motives, too.
Crow’s writing is lean and unpretentious, dialogue coloured — sparely yet effectively — with dry humour. But while she does a fine job establishing the complicated relationship between Beth and Tanner, the mother-daughter dynamic that should be at the heart of the play is less developed, resulting in a first half that feels inconsistently paced.
Only when “The Born-Again Crow” goes full goth — its picket-fence portrait of reality quite literally comes crashing down — does it really blossom.
It’s around this point that Beth becomes acquainted with a talking, anthropomorphic crow (Madison Walsh), a wise, trickster-like figure who disrupts the status quo and helps Beth reclaim her sense of agency. From then on, this coming-of-rage play charts a blazing descent into chaos that’s spectacular to watch.
Especially in the latter half, Crow toys with her play’s structure. What’s initially a linear narrative is soon splayed apart, travelling both forwards and backwards in time. And as Beth becomes increasingly repressed by those around her, including her neighbours, Crow offers a sly commentary on Indigenous sovereignty and self-determination.
Director Jessica Carmichael does a fine job highlighting these themes in her production, while drawing out strong performances from the four-person cast.
Sky projects both strength and vulnerability as Beth, while Maracle captures Francine’s helpless sense of love for her daughter.
As the crow, dressed by costume designer Asa Benally to look like a punk-rock superstar, Walsh injects a jolt of energy whenever she’s onstage. And Mousseau is a scene-stealer playing a quartet of secondary characters who all violate Beth — both verbally and physically — and set in motion the play’s chaotic events.
Last year, “The Born-Again Crow” won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama. Deservedly so. Aside from literary adaptations such as “Frankenstein” and “Jekyll and Hyde,” the gothic drama has become all too rare in the theatre. Yet Crow’s impassioned new work reminds us why it still deserves a place on the stage.
