“I want there to be blood.” And so there most definitely will be blood. The Canadian premiere of Liz Appel’s WIGHTS, directed by Crow’s Theatre’s Artistic Director Chris Abraham, is a haunting examination of humans and the societies we’ve created. Rich with intellectual arguments, heightened emotional tension, and a twist straight out of a horror film, WIGHTS is a brilliant feat of theatrical writing. Look out, Aaron Sorkin, Liz Appel is here to give you a run for your money!

Once again, the Guloien Theatre at Streetcar Crowsnest has been totally reimagined for WIGHTS. This theatre-in-the-round set features a massive kitchen island and table atop a platform of what initially appears to be kitchen tile. The corners of the room become the front hall and kitchen areas, while a pantry and living room occupies one of the spaces between seating sections. Scattered around the room are pillars, covered in black cloth, whose secrets remain hidden until intermission. Joshua Quinlan perpetually outdoes himself with these intricate and realistic set designs which consistently leave you feeling like you’re in a whole other space from the last time you visited Crow’s Theatre. Imogen Wilson’s lighting design frequently punctuates the story, directing our attention to various aspects of this dazzling set.

WIGHTS tells the story of Anita Knight, an accomplished professor at Yale. Her mother taught there as well, and she even lives in the house near campus which her mother bought when she began to teach there. Anita is going up for a huge promotion, and so she has a couple of her colleagues, Bing and Celine, over to help her prep for the next day’s presentation and interview. Anita’s husband Danny arrives home after a long day in court with a semi-victorious result for his client. Things get heated as Anita’s paper brings up notions of identity, personhood, and her friends nit-pick at the most simple things like her introduction and stating her pronouns. But the tension doesn’t ease once Bing and Celine head home for the night, instead it hits a fever pitch of anger and betrayal that causes both Anita and Danny to reconsider much of their lives together. There’s a cataclysmic shift before the intermission which clearly signals that these two humans have been changed forever, and things can never go back to how they were when the play began.

The verisimilitude in the writing, in not only what was said but how it was said, is what makes WIGHTS the absolute powerhouse of a play it is. Every character in this play has an extensive educational background, and they certainly show it off throughout the play. Yet in no way does it ever feel inaccessible or haughty; this is how these characters think and feel about the world around them and they have the elevated vocabulary to express it. Yet the intriguing part is that essential to the thesis of Anita’s paper is the inability to have language for what we cannot see. This provides the core of the conflict which then branches out into other aspects of their being. The aforementioned conflict is portrayed with characters speaking over one another and cutting each other off; it truly feels like an actual argument has broken out. This fly-on-the-wall feeling is only reaffirmed by the staging of the production, and even further confirmed in the second act of the play.

Rachel Leslie stars as Anita, and she gives a fierce, complex, and powerful performance. She can say so much with just a look, and at the end of the first act, when we see a side of Anita we haven’t seen before, it somehow feels like there’s a whole other person in the room. Richard Lee’s Bing is likewise feisty and formidable; it was easy to see how Bing and Anita had become friends. Lee’s dynamic delivery and comedic timing shine in his portrayal. Sochi Fried’s Celine has compassion and understanding in abundance, which makes her stand out amongst the other characters. Although her appearance in the second act nearly gave me nightmares. Ari Cohen’s Danny, however, steals the show in the second act. He goes on a rant so long that time becomes meaningless as you watch him spew out argument after argument. Cohen’s performance throughout the play is fantastic, and he gives this rather frustrating character a sense of boldness which then leads us to his final opus at the end. These performers had me on the edge of my seat from the moment the lights went up to the final blackout in a way that few shows can accomplish.

On a personal note, I loved that Anita was applying for a position for a social justice situation with an English background. Having obtained my MA in English Lit, there’s a constant struggle we face of being forced to prove why that degree is applicable to the other things we want to do. Anita does so beautifully in the portions of her paper we get to hear: witty wordplay, textual quotations, and her own unique perspective are proof of the myriad ways an English degree can be useful in other parts of the humanities, as well as outside that field. Having read about Liz Appel’s background, I can only imagine that she too knows this feeling all to well, and it felt really nice to see a character get what they want outside of their initial field using the skills they’ve developed as an English major and professor.

Part of our present day and yet outside of time altogether, WIGHTS takes the topics which we banter about today and puts them into a pressure cooker of a situation. While the end result is an M. Night Shyamalan level twist, it fully works with the rest of the text. You’ll certainly want to bring someone with you: WIGHTS has plenty of topics for you to mull over on the ride home.

WIGHTS runs at the Guloien Theatre at Streetcar Crowsnest until February 9th (though I anticipate several extensions). For more information and tickets, visit: https://www.crowstheatre.com/whats-on/view-all/wights

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Cover Photo: Rachel Leslie as Anita. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

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