REVIEW: 19 Weeks tackles real life abortion dilemma in devastating detail
In 2016, Australian playwright Emily Steel wrote a raw, highly emotional, intensely personal play that she felt would end her career.
At one time, she thought that women who had “late” abortions weren’t very smart or responsible – yet here she was, pregnant for 19 weeks, putting on a hospital gown and having an IV drip inserted. She was terminating a fetus. She confides to us, “My fear was that people would think I was a horrible, heartless person, but how people are going to perceive you cannot alter the decision of how you live your life.”
Steel turned that experience into a play. The achingly personal one-woman show is the final show of the season from Trevor Schmidt’s adventurous Northern Light Theatre in a co-production with Azimuth Theatre. 19 Weeks plays at the ATB Financial Art Barns through April 13.
This affecting production certainly has found a welcoming home in NLT’s boundary pushing space.
In her consuming drive to tell her story in forensic detail, Steel spares neither herself, nor superlative Edmonton actor Vanessa Sabourin. Writer and actor combust to relay the wrenching true life experience with love, humour, sadness and absolute honesty. It is one woman’s journey through a situation many women face, but is almost never discussed.
The 75 minutes are delivered as one long narrative monologue. We are pulled into Steel’s relationship with her long-time and remarkably understanding partner, Chris. Their son, Frank, is too young to understand why this unborn baby won’t be able to come out and play with him.
Her second pregnancy felt different from the outset. She was so sick that at times she was unable to function. Steel endured the many tests, doctor’s appointments and phone calls. Her child had trisomy 21 – Down Syndrome. Sabourin puts a very human face on the agonizing weeks leading up to the final decision and the long anxiety-ridden times beyond. The playwright had an example of what to expect in her own family. Her uncle suffered a number of growing medical difficulties and was cared for all his life by his mother – who gave up any hope of a life of her own.
This is not a show just for women. This is a show with a whole range of emotions involving rage, empathy and finally hope, and its impact is universal. Steel’s final decision is not easily made – in fact, it’s agonizing.
“What kind of person am I?” she wails. “If I was a real mother I’d sacrifice everything for the baby.”
And later, accepting what she feels must be done, ”My life has value too.”
Sabourin comes to the production with a lifetime of superb performances, but seldom has she had this kind of raw material to work with. She’s an outstanding storyteller and a compelling actor who gives a wonderfully layered performance. She immediately develops an intimacy with the audience that demands our collusion – no matter how we feel about the outcome. The space in the ATB Studio Theatre and Schmidt’s close-up set pushes us into physical immediacy with the actor. Steel writes in spare prose that elicits compassion, certainly not pity. Her use of language is clear, matter of fact and unapologetically honest. Sabourin responds by delivering a grounded, immediate and vulnerable performance.
The audience barely moves during the show – completely invested both in Steel’s truthful writing, and Sabourin’s deep and affecting portrayal. I know, it’s what an actor does, but there is so much going on here and so close to the surface, you wonder how this outstanding performer can hold it together for the entire evening.
Schmidt is likewise a remarkable director. He is capable of directing broad, raucous gay comedies aiming for laughs both high and low. But yet in plays like this his craft and subtly are indisputable. It’s there in Sabourin’s performance, in his subtle use of well-chosen music cues and lighting used to imperceptibly change the mood.
19 Weeks is devastating and one of the finest and most involving theatre experiences of the season.
Photos by Epic Photography
READ REVIEWS OF OTHER NORTHERN LIGHT THEATRE PLAYS THIS SEASON:
Origin of the Species, October 2018
The Cardiac Shadow, January 2019
