Lakeshore Players end season with dark, female-led comedy
To borrow heavily from the late Harper Lee, you can choose your friends but you sure as heck can’t choose your family, so you might as well give it the best go you can give.
Lakeshore Players Dorval closes its season with a play that elevates family dysfunction to a whole new level.
Crimes of the Heart opens at Lakeshore Academy in Lachine on Thursday.
The play, written by American playwright Beth Henley, is about three sisters who gather at their family home in Mississippi after the youngest shoots her abusive husband. It won the Pulitzer Prize for drama in 1981, was nominated for a Tony Award the same year and in 1986, the film starring Diane Keaton, Sissy Spacek and Jessica Lange was nominated for three Oscars.
“It deals with heavy subject matter
— mental illness, abuse — but in a subtle way,” Tracey McKee said. “It’s actually very funny.”
Radio personality and John Abbott College teacher McKee plays the oldest sister, Lenny. The youngest sister, Babe, is played by Nadia Pearson and middle sister Meg is played by Stephanie von Ro-retz. Meg ’s former boyfriend, Doc Porter, is played by Derek Fletcher, Cynthia Brind’Amour plays the sister’s first cousin, Chick, and attorney Barnette Lloyd is played by Daniel Findleton.
Last season, McKee was on the play-selection committee and had a hand in selecting Crimes of the Heart. She loved the fact it had three strong female lead characters, and it was also a play she got to know well while studying English and theatre arts at the University of Western Ontario.
“Everybody is part of a family and this is a play which is, above all else, about family bonds,” McKee said. “Lenny is an interesting character. She is the one that stayed at home to look after the ailing grandfather while her sisters went on with their lives. She takes on all the responsibility. There are no men in her life. I think her character is the one that changes the most over the course of the play.”
McKee is the baby in a family of five sisters, so she came to the play with a clear understanding of life with siblings.
“One minute you’re screaming at each other and the next minute you’re hugging,” she said. “That’s the normal push and pull of sibling relationships.”
The mother of two juggles teaching, working on the radio and a busy family life. And now there are evening rehearsals, but McKee is not complaining.
“Taking on a play is an intense commitment. But the stage is the one place I feel utterly happy,” she said. “Theatre is not only a creative outlet for me, it’s a passion.”