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REVIEW: Tell Us What Happened offers opportunity for growth instead of answers

With only minimal faults, Michelle Robb's debut play is can't-miss theatre.
1805 tell us review SCREENSHOT copy CC
Edmonton actor and dancer Michelle Robb makes her playwrighting debut with Tell Us What Happened. SCREENSHOT/Photo

Review

Tell Us What Happened

Running until Sunday, May 22

Gateway Theatre

8529 Gateway Boulevard 

Tickets: Available online at https://www.showpass.com/o/workshop-west-playwrights-theatre/

What are we supposed to do when our institutions fail us? What are we supposed to do in situations where we are entirely powerless? What are we supposed to do when the curtains hiding the soul of those we love are pulled back, and we don't like what we see?

Debut playwright Michelle Robb asks, but doesn't answer, these questions in Tell Us What Happened.

Instead, Robb, award-winning director Heather Inglis, and a five-member cast deliver a meticulously calculated and considerate production that forces you to grow as a person.

Theatre is a limited medium since an actor has one chance to express emotion, and delivering a strong performance is no easy feat in a play about the incessant horror that follows sexual assault, but the cast of Tell Us What Happened is up to the challenge.

Bonnie Ings plays Charlie, the story's lead, who started a Facebook group where people could share their experiences of harm, and in turn find support, friendship, and advice. Later you learn Charlie started the group years before because it's what she wished she had when she suffered abuse as a teenager.

Ings delivers a performance so believable you can't imagine her in any other production. The play's only setting is Charlie's apartment, a detail Ings evidently takes to heart as each movement is done with the ease of someone who is "home."

Gabby Bernard plays one of Charlie's roommates, Piper, a self-questioning artist going through the throes of Murphy's Law. As Piper, Bernard provides welcomed comic relief. Although never stealing the spotlight from Ings, Bernard expertly leads the momentum in each scene she's in.

If yelling gives you a headache, make sure you're prepared for Michelle Diaz's rendition of Zoey, the loud and proud older cousin of the story's sexual assault survivor. Zoey is an abrasive character in an already confrontational story, and at certain points Diaz even appears constrained — like she only needs to deliver half the passion she's capable of. 

Jameela McNeil takes on the role of 17-year-old Leah, whose sexual assault sparks the play's narrative. Surprisingly, McNeil is given little to work with. Leah has comparatively few lines despite being, arguably, Tell Us What Happened's raison d'être. However, McNeil delivers an admirable emotional performance, especially in the final scene.

Matt Dejanovic, who was raised in St. Albert, makes his professional acting debut in Tell Us What Happened. An unfortunate aspect of the play is that unless you know nothing about the show before you see it, you know Dejanovic's character, Josh, is Leah's abuser. By knowing this, you know more than the other characters do. The other characters get to be surprised, they get to feel the shock of Josh's actions, but you know what's coming.

Dejanovic's role is tough. Through Robb's design, Josh is flawed, but his existence in the play's world is also confined to his actions in his best friend Charlie's apartment, and hearsay from the other characters. Josh doesn't have the opportunity to be a rounded character despite Robb's attempt to evoke empathy for the antagonist. Unfortunately, Dejanovic occasionally embodies the anxiety that comes with being in a room where you're not wanted.

An intuitive viewer will find in Josh a pattern of manipulative, selfish, and disingenuous behaviour. It's tough to tell if this is accomplished by accident or by Robb's accurate depiction of far too many young men.

The questions Tell Us What Happened raise can feel unanswerable, and Robb shows it's common for sexual assault survivors to not even have the chance to try and answer them. 

In the play's conclusion the audience should, and does, feel something for Josh, but it's probably not what the four women feel. The four women are delivered yet another emotional haymaker, and you are left to obsess about what just happened until you're finally able to fall asleep, much later than you planned.

There are few things that can make a good play a great play. On paper, Tell Us What Happened is a good play. Brian Bast's phenomenal set design; Whittyn Jason's astonishing lighting and costume design; and Kiidra Duhault's hair-raising sound design make Tell Us What Happened a great play.

Despite some petty flaws, Robb's debut accomplished something incredibly important: she created an unbelievably realistic record of the labyrinth sexual assault survivors must navigate, and how dehumanizing it can be to watch people act like they're worth more than you.

An underappreciated aspect of art is its ability to create a record of the present that can be referenced later. If you were asked to describe what day-to-day life was like in the golden age of England, would your answer be informed by Shakespeare's plays? Think of the timely emotions recorded by artists such as Gord Downie or Aretha Franklin and ask yourself if those recordings accurately allow new generations of people the chance to feel what so many of us have felt. 

Theatre has another limitation; it ends. Most plays are never recorded to be referenced later, but by seeing a play, you become the record of the artist.

Do the world a favour and become a record of Robb's brilliant debut — new generations will need it.


Jack Farrell

About the Author: Jack Farrell

Jack Farrell joined the St. Albert Gazette in May, 2022.
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