Vigil
"a delight from beginning to end"
Robert Reid, The Kitchener-Waterloo Record
Written by Morris Panych, featuring Joyce Campion and Stephen Woodjetts in the cast. The
production was directed by Martha Henry and designed by Allan Wilbee with lighting by Louise
Guinand. Linda Matassa was the stage manager, assisted by Joy M. Swain.
Vigil ran for 9 performances, November 3 - 11, 2000
Synopsis
Kemp receives a letter from a dying aunt he hasn’t seen in thirty years. He quits his job
at a bank and travels a thousand miles by train to attend her bedside in an upstairs room in a
decrepit old house. He suggests they discuss funeral arrangements and disposal of goods. He
even presents her with a will to sign, leaving everything to him. He says that after she dies
he might mix her ashes in with some soil and plant an amaryllis. Grace (the aunt’s name is
Grace) gets over her initial shock at Kemp’s arrival and begins to knit. The spring days go
by. Kemp tells Grace about his pathetically unhappy childhood. He is puzzled that there
appear to be no pictures of him or his family around her room. Summer arrives. Kemp comments
to Grace that they are becoming used to each other. He explains that he has cut himself off
from almost everybody, that he has no friends, is disgusted with humanity and feels a sort of
sick astonishment at people’s will to live - hers in particular. Autumn passes. Kemp builds
a suicide machine for Grace, a sort of Rube Goldberg affair, which he arranges around her bed
and invites her to use when she feels that “another day would be one too many.” On Christmas Eve,
when she hasn’t used it, he draws a diagram and re-instructs her in its use - and gets shocked
and knocked unconscious when she turns it on while he’s leaning over her. When he regains
consciousness she wishes him “Merry Christmas” in the first words she’s uttered since the play
began and presents him with a gift -- which so astonishes Kemp that he refuses to open it.
New Years’ Eve brings resolution and a reaffirming of goals. Kemp attempts to poison Grace
with ant poison in her butterscotch pudding but snatches it away from her at the last
moment. As he muses on his motives -- “Maybe there’s some good in me after all. No. Now I
remember. I’m a coward.” -- he accidentally shocks himself again on a table lamp he had
previously booby-trapped for Grace. “If you don’t die soon, I think it’s going to kill me.”
Kemp tries to strangle himself with a rope, but Grace prevents him. After a stunning revelation
(which we won’t give away) Kemp leaves -- for a while. Grace continues to knit. She’s been
making a sweater for Kemp. When it’s finished she hangs it in the middle of the room where she
can see it from the bed. Kemp returns to say goodbye. He admits he can’t go back to the bank
because, when he left, he tried to rob it - but forgot to fill the suitcase with money. He
rants that mankind has no sense of obligation. “In a better world,” he says, “there would be
somebody, here, at your side.” "There is," Grace replies. Kemp stays and the two trade
gestures of affection. She gives him the sweater; he brushes her hair. Kemp suggests they go
on holiday together. With the words, “I’m sorry to interrupt, but would you excuse me, please,”
Grace dies. Kemp grieves. In the last scene of the play he plants Grace’s ashes in the pot
with the amaryllis, and, rather than leave, sits down to wait for the flowers to bloom.
From Touchmark Theatre's Press Release, April 26, 2000
Martha Henry, Canada’s leading actress and one of our finest directors, will direct
Touchmark Theatre’s opening production this season, Artistic Director Douglas Beattie
announced today. “It’s an enormous honour to have Martha involved in the season, directing
Morris Panych’s wonderful play Vigil,” Beattie said, “and a coup to have landed a team of
artists who have worked with her before at the Stratford Festival or at the Grand Theatre in
London and who all jumped at the chance to do so again.” Stratford residents, designer Allan
Wilbee, lighting designer Louise Guinand and stage manager Linda Matassa, will
join actor Stephen Woodjetts. Vigil is a deliciously black comedy about a
middle-aged curmudgeon who quits his job and travels a thousand miles by train to attend the
bedside of an elderly aunt and provide his own outrageous brand of palliative care.
From Touchmark's Press Release, September 1, 1999
Shaw and Stratford Festival veteran Joyce Campion will take part in Touchmark Theatre’s
2000/2001 season, Artistic Director Douglas Beattie announced today. Ms. Campion will reprise
the role of Grace in Morris Panych’s play Vigil, a part she played in the Tarragon Theatre’s
production in 1996, this time opposite Stephen Woodjetts as Kemp...
The Playwright
Actor, director and writer Morris Panych grew up in Edmonton and studied creative
writing at the University of British Columbia and theatre at East 15, London, England. His most
recent theatre piece to grace Ontario stages is The Overcoat, co-created and co-directed with
Wendy Gorling, which played the National Arts Centre (Ottawa) and the Canadian Stage Company
(Toronto) earlier this year. Another recent play, Lawrence & Holloman, has had four
productions so far, including one at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre. Among his other plays, Cost
of Living, a play for teenagers, has been produced across Canada and internationally;
7 Stories has had over a hundred professional and amateur productions in North America
so far; and The Ends of the Earth won the 1994 Governor General’s Award for Drama. Mr.
Panych makes his home on the west coast with his partner, set designer Ken MacDonald.
Director's Note on the Play
Some scripts simply walk up to you and lay their treasures out immediately. Other plays
infiltrate, insinuate -- only gradually unfolding their complexities and surprises. These plays
are the most fun -- for actors and audiences alike. When I first read Morris Panych's Vigil,
I thought it was a darkly funny play about a lonely man trying to re-establish a connection with
a long-lost aunt. As we rehearsed it, I came to realize that the "real" story is about the gift
this woman gives to Kemp: She allows him, for the first time in his life, to be completely
himself.
Reviews
...Panych's black and richly funny comment on family and relationships is an excellent
choice to open this small but promising season. Panych skewers all of the real and societally
imposed conventions of contemporary family expectations, probing the cause of the all too
familiar emptiness in our lives.
Bill Penner, The Guelph Mercury
Although uproariously funny, Vigil is a moving meditation about loneliness and
mortality and the love that not only bridges but transcends both. It would be easy for a
production to cash in on the former at the expense of the latter. But this is a balanced
offering of belly laughs and tears... the production is a delight from beginning to end...
Henry respects the play's structure by guiding the action with a light, yet firm, hand. One
gets the impression she pays especially close attention to Kemp. Woodjetts is best known as a
composer and arranger... But, as he confirms here, he can also act.
Robert Reid, Kitchener-Waterloo Record
Henry has taken a realist approach in making the situations and statements, no matter how
outlandish, arise from the characters. This has the great advantage of making the characters
who seem so absurd in the first act plausible and empathetic in the second, so that the total
change in mood near the end of the play becomes understandable. We see it is merely the
author's delay in supplying key information that causes us to perceive the action of the first
act as so bizarre... To that end, Allan Wilbee provides a naturalistic, very cozy apartment
for Grace and appropriate costumes for her and the unkempt Kemp. A major symbol of the set,
visible during the frequent blackouts, is the luminous dial of the mantle clock, its hands
whirling around. We thus are never allowed to forget the themes of time and mortality even
between scenes. The play is beautifully lit by Louise Guinand, who not only lets us see the
changing light of the seasons out the large window stage right but also highlights objects
important to Henry's interpretation of the play, particularly Grace's Christmas gift to Kemp.
Luke de Ruiter provides clever, often humorous background sounds that let us know what is
happening in the wide world outside... Joyce Campion is perfectly cast as Grace... Though
silent through the entire first act, Campion has such presence that a mere gesture or facial
expression from her varied repertoire is more than enough to counterbalance Kemp's stream of
words. When she does speak... we hang on her every word... As always she is a joy to watch
and it is a pleasure to see her in such a major role.
Christopher Hoile, Stage Door
Campion... plays Grace as a nimble mouse to Kemp's bungling cat.
Robert Reid, Kitchener-Waterloo Record
Campion knows she is the dramatic foil of the piece, and she underplays the role to
perfection.
Bill Penner, The Guelph Mercury
...Woodjetts does make us glimpse this sense of desperation beneath Kemp's constant
outpourings of negativity. The great advantage of Woodjett's portrayal is that his manner is so
completely deadpan that there is no sense that his character is aware that the outrageous
things he says and does are funny. This, of course, as the best actors and directors know,
makes the comedy even more hilarious.
Christopher Hoile, Stage Door
What a wonderful evening of discovery for me, my husband and our four friends who joined us
that night. None of us knew the play, and all of us thought we had discovered a small treasure.
The production was excellent... The six of us met for tea at our home afterwards and continued
our discussions about the play and the performances long into the night. Thanks for your
theatrical gift to us.
Ella Pauls, Guelph
Thank you for bringing such great theatre to Guelph!
Heather Bailey, Guelph
©copyright 1999 - 2008 by Touchmark Theatre all rights reserved
Photo by Doug Marr. Joyce Campion & Stephen Woodjetts