Ernie Nolan and Leah Dalrymple in Casey and Diana (Don Ipock)
In 1991, Princess Diana paid a visit to Casey House in Toronto, Canada’s first stand-alone hospice facility for people with AIDS. The visit, and specifically photos of Diana shaking hands with residents, was heralded as a major step in destigmatizing the disease and humanizing patients at a time when fear and ignorance dominated the conversation around AIDS. That humanity that Diana’s visit celebrated is the core of Casey and Diana, now onstage at The Unicorn Theatre, which imagines the week leading up to her arrival, and the immense effect the anticipation had on the men living with—and rapidly dying from—AIDS.
At five months, Thomas (a divine performance from The Unicorn’s new Artistic Director, Ernie Nolan) has been at Casey House longer than any of the other residents. He’s also, hands down, the most excited by the news of the upcoming visit. This man, who has never met a situation that couldn’t be met with a Steel Magnolias quote or a Golden Girls quip, is rendered speechless by the announcement. But they are told of Diana’s visit a week in advance—or, more specifically, seven whole days. That’s an eternity for these men, who are taking their remaining time minute by minute.
Under Sidonie Garrett’s elegant direction, the visual elements of Casey and Diana are effective in their simplicity. Selena Gonzalez-Lopez’s set makes use of the depth possible in The Unicorn’s modular Jerome Stage, with small shifts in side panels and Art Kent’s lighting changing the setting. In the scenes Thomas shares with Princess Diana (a spot-on impression by Leah Dalrymple), the light flits around as if we are inside an aquarium. Whether the dreamy lighting reflects that these scenes are Thomas’s fantasy or simply a dream come true is kept satisfyingly vague.
In Casey and Diana, playwright Nick Green keeps his cast small to let every character fully bloom. We have long-term resident Thomas and his newly admitted, very scared young roommate, Andre (Darrington Clark). They’re tended to by a committed but perhaps slightly jaded nurse, Vera (Chioma Anyanwu), and Marjorie (a phenomenal Jan Rogge), a volunteer who is new to Casey House but has a lifetime of experience. Being at Casey House requires them all to accept death as an inevitability, and they each have different relationships with that fact. They’ve all also lost far too many loved ones already.
This is a play where every member of the small cast gets a full arc, complete with their own Big Monologue. That makes for some stellar performances (Cinnamon Schultz’s emotional speech as Thomas’ estranged sister Pauline is a particular tearjerker), but ends up feeling a bit overstuffed. In fact, my only real complaint for Casey and Diana is that its nearly two and a half hour runtime (including intermission) feels overlong. The play’s substance and the talented cast make that easy to forgive, though.
Given the play’s subject matter and its structure, it would be easy to sink into melodrama, but that’s not an issue here. There is a lot of humor in this play, but there’s also straightforward pragmatism, as death is tragic, but it’s also reality—an immediate reality—for these characters. Casey and Diana tackles big questions: How do we let ourselves love someone we know will leave us? How do we let ourselves dream for an uncertain future? There aren’t answers for any of these questions, of course. The beauty is in the asking.
“Casey and Diana” runs through February 15 at the Unicorn Theatre, 3828 Main St. For more information, visit unicorntheatre.org.
