Innocence Lost. A play about Steven Truscott : an opportunity missed
Photo: Allen McInnis
Playwright Beverly Cooper.
NAC English Theatre/Centaur Theatre, Montreal co-production
Two lives were destroyed when 12-year-old Lynne Harper was raped and murdered in Clinton in 1959. Numerous others were tainted. Life would never be the same for anyone even peripherally involved in the railroading of 14-year-old Steven Truscott and the miscarriage of justice that initially sentenced him to hang for the crime.
The dramatic potential of the sad story and the fact that the guilty verdict was not overturned until 2007 (almost 50 years after the event and without the killer being found) is clear.
The result in Innocence Lost is not. Playwright Beverley Cooper’s carefully researched but weak script barely holds the attention. Presented as something similar to a rerun of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town, it does make the point of the insider/outsider dichotomy apparent in many small towns, but it lessens the focus on the key point of justice gone awry.
Add to this the lifeless nature of the production directed by Roy Surette, the excessive reliance on often poor back projections and the inclusion of an uninteresting fictional character as narrator/classmate and even more of the potential of the Steven Truscott story is squandered.
Performances with the exception of the outstanding Fiona Reid as journalist Isabel LeBourdais (and several other roles) and a solid portrayal of Steven Truscott by Trevor Barrette, are shallow with little distinction to clarify the assorted roles.
A better choice for showcasing the material might have been Calgary playwright Louis B. Hobson’s version of the Truscott story, presented in a far more effective script (praised by Steven Truscott as well as the media in a Guelph-area production some years ago).
Innocence Lost continues at the NAC English theatre in the Studio until March 16
Innocence Lost: a play about Steven Truscott
by Beverly Cooper.
NAC English Theatre/Centaur Theatre, Montreal co-production