National Post (National Edition)
Ontario killings not worthy of stage
Secondary ‘role’ that victims take is wrong-headed
There is a new chapter in the ongoing saga of serial killer narratives and whether they amount to art or outright exploitation. The latest cruel piece of business is not a play, exactly, but a “staged transcript” of the interrogation of disgraced former Canadian Forces colonel Russell Williams, the one that made a household name of Det. Sgt. Jim Smyth of the Ontario Provincial Police.
One Little Goat Theatre Company’s production of Smyth-Williams is scheduled to open next week at Theatre Passe Muraille’s Backstage in Toronto. The public is virtually unanimous that murderers should never profit from their crimes, but reaction to the artistic community’s role in hocking tickets, or books, or made for television movies — and our role in consuming that output — is much more unsettled.
There is a very blurry line between what often begins with awareness-raising and too often ends with infamy-making. When the force and intensity of the public gaze turns away from the suffering of victims toward perpetrators, a secondary act of violence is committed: an act of cold-blooded voyeurism that leads to forgetting them and remembering him.
It’s no surprise that there’s a petition with a couple of thousand signatures asking producers to reconsider the staging on the grounds that it amounts to a crime within a crime and forces victims and their families “to relive the horror of their loss.” One of the signatories called it the worst kind of “lazy playwriting,” which is generous. I think Truman Capote would have called it typing.
Director Adam Seelig has said this production is meant to raise awareness about sexual violence against women, a phrase that aims at sincerity but misses the mark especially when a teaser on the poster promises “A fascinating interrogation.” That sounds an awful lot like entertainment. In addition to the transcript itself, Seelig is using dialogue attributed to Williams’ victims, women who can no longer speak for themselves, and he has done this without the consent of their families.
In promoting the production Broadway World has cited an unnamed source from the OPP who once described the interrogation as “a smart man being outsmarted by a smarter man.” (Flattery for a convicted murderer, once dubbed a “Man of Mystery” in a headline by the Globe and Mail, is, however unintentionally, infuriating.) So the source material for a production that’s supposed to be about violence against women is — like the play’s own title — all about men, one of whom was their murderer.
Indeed the interrogation video, which lives in a state of relative permanence on YouTube, another crime within a crime, has become something of a serial killer’s gift to himself: it’s a control freak’s fantasy film. In it Williams gets the last word on just about everything, including the character and emotional state of his victims in their final hours — who was or was not “co-operative” and who was or was not “scared.”
The tone of cool detachment throughout the interrogation results in further objectification. Names are used sparingly; references to “she” and “her” abound. At one point Det. Smyth says “I don’t know why I can’t recall their names.” He means the two women who were forcibly confined but not murdered. Is Smyth still in character at that point, keeping up the appearance of being a “bud”? Or did he actually forget their names?
For his part, Williams speaks only in passing about motive. As to the why of his crimes he says, “I’m pretty sure the answers don’t matter.” Like a master illusionist he’ll go to his grave with his secrets intact.
Many of the comments on the numerous versions of the interrogation that appear online read like a standing ovation for a “legendary” piece of police work. Between a star interrogator’s accolades, and a serial killer cementing his abominable brand, it is no wonder there is very little room left for the victims.
I drove away from the VIA Rail station in Belleville on the night of Feb. 8, 2010, the day Jessica Lloyd’s body was found in the woods off an idyllic country road not far from my home. The message of hope for her safe return that I’d seen outside a local restaurant that morning had turned to one of condolence: prayers for the Lloyd family.
Knowing our morbid fascination with serial murderers, I made a promise that night to never forget Jessica or Cpl. Marie-France Comeau, the first murder victim. Then last summer, while explaining to a friend my uneasiness about touring the now-closed Kingston Penitentiary, former home to Williams and other notorious criminals, the women’s names slipped, temporarily, from my memory. Their killer’s name, however, came with remarkable speed.
Jessica and Marie-France should be, like me, enjoying life in Ontario’s Greenbelt: living, working, stressing, loving and, perhaps, raising families of their own. Their stories deserve to be told, they should be remembered, but not by giving the man who murdered them yet more power in perpetuity through some wrong-headed theatrical exploration.
Not everything is material.