Mourning Dove - noah and compassionate homicide
When I was in high school, my English teacher delighted in torturing our class with impossible moral choices. His favourite scenarios involved cages suspended over vats of acid.
At times, a pre-1933 Adolph Hitler was in one while a great humanitarian sat in the other. Sometimes members of our family shared Hitler's cell and therefore his fate. Sometimes, babies or heroes roomed with him. In each iteration, we were asked to choose who would live or die. If we didn’t, both cages would drop. The experiment was timed.
I still remember the sick-to-my-stomach, sweat-between-my-breasts feeling evoked by these hypothetical tests of our ‘integrity.’
How much worse would the feeling be if the choice of life or death had actually involved my own child? Pacific Theatre’s production of Toronto playwright Emil Sher’s Mourning Dove – based on the Latimer case – answers this question. Or, maybe it’s better to say that the play presents one sector of the complex minefield surrounding euthanasia. And the result is both terrifying and transcendent. Surprisingly, if you see the play, you will laugh as much as you cry.
To establish context, here is a re-cap of the Latimer case. Be prepared for a rollercoaster ride…
On October 24, 1993, Saskatchewan farmer Robert Latimer killed his 12-year-old daughter, Tracy, by placing her in the cab of his truck and then running a hose from the exhaust into the body of the vehicle. At 12, Tracy weighed 40 pounds and could neither walk, talk nor feed herself. She lived in constant pain.
Latimer admitted to the crime and in November 1995 was convicted of second-degree murder. (The minimum sentence for second-degree murder is 25 years with no chance of parole for 10 years.) Then, in October 1997, Robert Latimer stood trial again after the Supreme Court ruled that the RCMP had tampered with jurors. He was convicted again of second-degree homicide.
However, in December 1997, Justice Ted Noble granted Latimer a constitutional exemption from the minimum sentence, stating that Tracy’s murder was a “rare act of homicide that was committed for caring and altruistic reasons.” But, in November 1998, the Saskatchewan Court of Appeal overturned Noble’s ruling and re-imposed the mandatory minimum sentence. On January 18, 2001, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld his conviction and life sentence. Ultimately, on March 13, 2008, Latimer was released on day parole.
That said and understood, let’s step back and into the play, which concerns (after all) the experiences of four fictional characters: father Doug Ramsay (Kerry Van der Griend), mother Sandra Ramsay (Anita Wittenberg), daughter Tina Ramsay (Laura Van Dyke) and family friend, Keith Martel (Ron Reed).
The staging is poetic and simple. Tina never appears in person but is rather a disembodied voice that laughs, coughs, cries and seizures. But she and her illness are ever-present and demanding forces. All the action takes place in Doug’s workshop. One side of the stage is dominated by a hand-crafted Noah’s ark; on the other side, handyman tools hang and paint cans stand ready. And beautiful animal puppets are suspended above the actors’ heads. The set is thus one powerful visual allusion to the story of Noah –the man tasked by God to make the ultimate selection. In the face of a world-consuming flood, Noah chose two of every species and left the rest to die.
As Keith, the Ramsay’s mentally challenged and profoundly insightful friend, observes, “That’s why he’s called ‘Noah’. Because he says ‘no’ a lot.”
The ark is Doug’s physical expression of love for his daughter. He wants to make Tina laugh. So, obsessively, he has built the ark as the set for a comic puppet show to make Tina laugh.
Simultaneously, his choice to play Noah also reveals Doug’s belief that Tina’s life and comfort is in his hands.
Van der Griend is subtle, sad and masculine in the role of Doug Ramsay. He is believable and selfishly cruel when he asks a bemused and fearful Keith to hogtie him so that he can experience a taste of Tina’s constricted life. He speaks honestly and lovingly to his invisible “pumpkin.” And when Sandra asks him, as he prepares to go to goes to court, whether he would choose to take Tina’s life if he could go back in time, he answers: “I’d do it. Only this time, I’d stay in the truck.”
Anita Wittenberg is smart and plucky as Sandra. She makes and dons a ‘Team Tina’ hockey shirt, and with great humility, accepts the help of women in the community to care for Tina when she is recovering from yet another surgery. The moment when she recognizes what Doug has done during her absence at church is both riveting and fleeting. And she’s still, after the loss of her daughter, got the gumption to say, “My hunch is that Noah told [his wife] they were going on a long trip and skipped the details.”
But the real show-stopper is Keith Martel, whom Ron Reed renders with ultimate respect. Like the fool in a Shakespeare play, Keith points out the absurdity of people’s fixed beliefs. For example, early on, he asks Doug if he can “be Noah this time. Without a script.” Keith refuses to believe that all the animals wouldn’t be welcome aboard the ark.
Later, Keith, a faithful reader of horoscopes, tells his friend – the murderer – “I love you” since his horoscope has urged him to “let someone know what [he] really [feels].”
Of course, that’s before Doug tells Keith that he has killed Tina, and the Ramsays become the target of their neighbours’ hate and pity. One of the most striking aspects of the play is the continuing and evolving relationship that Sandra Ramsay maintains with the man who murdered her daughter. Maybe that is possible because, as Sandra maintains, having Tina made the couple “special.”
Okay, so I can’t offer you an easy answer to the questions this play raises. But I can recommend that you see it and wrestle with the issues yourself. I feel stronger for taking on that challenge. So might you.
Mourning Dove runs to November 15 at Pacific Theatre (1440 W. 12th Avenue). Director: Angela Konrad; Scenic Designer: Laughlin Johnston; Lighting Designer: Matthew Frankish; Sound Designer: Cling Lindsey; Costume Designer: Naomi Sider; Cast: Ron Reed, Kerry Van der Griend, Laura Van Dyke, Anita Wittenberg. For more information go here.