The story of a hard-hitting production’s reemergence after 28 years of reflection
U of G Prof. Judith Thompson’s Lion in the Streets is heavy. The play is about a murdered nine-year-old Portuguese immigrant named Isobel, who returns to the world 17 years later in search of her killer. In her purgatory-like state, Isobel witnesses the suffering, violence, and pain of other people’s lives. The play is dark and surreal, often going into the depths of human nature. “It’s all brought to the surface — the truth,” Thompson told The Ontarion.
The play was inspired by the 1983 abduction and murder of a young girl in Toronto named Sharin’ Morningstar Keenan. Thompson wrote the play in 1990, and it premiered that year at duMaurier World Stage Festival in Toronto, winning the Chalmers Award in 1991. Since the play’s premiere, 28 years ago, Thompson has decided to revisit Lion in the Streets as a Mainstage production, citing its themes’ continued relevance in today’s society.
The play is structured in a series of interlocking scenes, each revealing different lives that only Isobel can witness. These are the lives of desperate people confronted by evil. Of Isobel, Thompson said, “All those primal instincts inside us come to the surface because of Isobel’s presence, and then she graces the victim and offers them something.”
Isobel is in a world of lost souls, a world of hell, a world of suffering that still continues today. “She is lost at the beginning,” Thompson explains. “It’s one of the things she yells out: ‘I am lost and we are all lost’ and this ‘is my house but is not my house.’”
“I think that we can identify with Isobel in the sense that we all feel like ghosts from time to time,” said Thompson. “We are searching for something, we want to be empowered and yet we have been disempowered, and we say ‘this is my world but is not my world.’”
When asked if there had been any changes made to the play for this upcoming performance, Thompson said, “There’s one scene that is so graphic, so difficult. It’s a boyfriend forcing his girlfriend to recount a rape and to pretend that she enjoyed it. I did change the text — I made it milder. And then [the cast] wanted to go back to some of the more graphic images [so we] put back some but not everything.”
Yes, this is a powerful play. It is direct, expressive, and confrontational. It’s ultimately a triumph of human spirit that’s one of peace, forgiveness, and salvation.
Lion in the Streets plays at the George Luscombe Theatre from Nov. 10 to 18.
Article by Adam Maue
Feature image courtesy of Playwrights Canada