Istvan Dugalin ➤

Madison Caan and Julia Docherty in ‘The Glory of Living’, Photo by Ziggy Schulting

There is a moment, near the end of this harrowing play, when a dutiful lawyer, Carl (Mark Kreder), his protective instincts frustrated by his death-row client’s despondency, confesses to Lisa (Madison Caan) that he does’t really understand her. With genuine affection she responds: “Yeah, but I appreciate you tryin’.”

It’s one of two deeply touching moments between them and it places him as an audience surrogate. We don’t quite understand her either. Overwhelmed with ambivalence yet deeply invested, we strain our emotional and moral faculties in the attempt. The play demands that we work through our discomfort, unpack our ethics and find a convicted murderer’s humanity.

In their inaugural production, The King Black Box tackles Rebecca Gilman’s The Glory of Living with a raw and cozy intensity. The venue is an intimate, almost claustrophobic space nestled on a third floor at King and Dufferin. Director Sophie Ann Rooney’s fiercely visceral staging pulls us violently into the abject reality of the story. Set in the rural American South of the late 1970s, we first meet Lisa as a girl of fifteen, nonchalantly peeling potatoes and watching classic movies while her mother services two local rednecks.

One of these men, Clint (Luis Fernandes), charms Lisa and takes her away with him. Eventually, a girl (Julia Docherty) even younger than Lisa, is pulled out from a covered cage, bound and half naked. She’s traumatized, of course, and her glassy-eyed dissociation helps her—and the audience!—cope with the situation. Docherty’s understated portrayal is plaintive and haunting. From here, the whole first act is a steady bombardment of repugnant episodes as Lisa and Clint lure a series of young women into motel rooms where—unseen, but heavily implied—Clint rapes them and persuades Lisa to kill them off for him.

Though fictional, the story is loosely based on Judith Ann Neelley and feels distinctly, repulsively real. Gilman’s dialogue is bursting with vulgar language and each wretched scenario is depicted with stark, persuasive verisimilitude. Fernandes is brutish and intimidating, his vicious streak all the more disturbing because of a genuinely disarming charisma. Caan is simultaneously pitiful and exasperating in her portrait of a tormented and broken person. Bridget Ori and Dianne Aguilar have compelling turns as quirky women who fall victim to the duo. Though we don’t spend much time with them, we get a very clear sense of who they are and where they’ve come from.

This holds true for the entire cast (many of whom play multiple parts) and overall aesthetic. The production’s resources are demonstrably scant, yet the performances are fully authentic and the air is charged. The squalid set is rife with mundane, resonant details and vintage props that establish an acute sense of time and place. Scene transitions are eerily executed with a motif of forensic investigation: flashlights bounce furtively about as gloved hands rearrange furniture, collect props and then retreat into the murk. The choice to underscore a tense confrontation with “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” (as The Wizard of Oz plays in the background) is uncanny and truly inspired.

The second act drags us into a legal procedural with interrogations and a trial. Rooney has added a few immersive elements. The over-arching conceit is that the audience itself are gathered as jurors who must eventually discuss and pass judgement on Lisa. There is also a postlude voiceover rendition of a poem by Judith Neelley’s daughter April, which she’d written in an attempt to humanize her mother. Though this is undeniably poignant, it feels rather unnecessary and even somewhat diminishes the impact of a truly affecting final moment between Lisa and her lawyer.

Shout out to fight and stunt choreographer Tommy Chang for maintaining an astonishing degree of realism in the violence, particularly impressive given the extreme proximity demanded by the tiny venue. It adds another layer of danger to this world of hard-living and toughened personae.

Moments of humour and gentle connection can be found here too; these are never precious or cloying, yet distinctly touching amidst the dismal circumstances and heinous behaviour that predominates. The slice-of-life potency of this disturbing story transcends its ugliness. As it examines the nuances of guilt and the complexities of coercive control, it ultimately offers a glimpse at redemptive possibility.

The Glory of Living
running May 16 to 31, 2024
The King Black Box (1224 King St W., 3rd floor)
running time: 2 hours, 30 minutes (including intermission)

Luis Fernandes and Madison Caan in ‘The Glory of Living’, Photo by Ziggy Schulting