REVIEW: Wights sizzles with ambition at Crow’s Theatre

iPhoto caption: Photo by Dahlia Katz.

Reviews

/By Ilana Lucas / Jan 20, 2025

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There’s something out there, trying to get in.

Or is there something inside, trying to get out?

In Liz Appel’s Wights at Crow’s Theatre, an academic argument about personhood, language, and action becomes all too real as a Yale professor prepares for an interview to lead the university’s centre for social justice. 

A Yale grad herself, Appel in her first professionally produced play (commissioned by Crow’s and directed by Chris Abraham) introduces audiences to an assured, sophisticated yet accessible voice that over two-and-a-half hours presents us with layered ideas about social justice, academic discussion versus legal action, the limited nature of North American-centric definitions of racism and success, and how differences in our intersectional identities impact our closest relationships. 

While the play’s genre-straddling form feels slightly too ambitious for its concept, this sheer ambition is exciting, challenging audiences to think, while warning us that we can only go so far with words.

It’s Halloween night, the week before the 2024 U.S. presidential election, and hope and tension are in the air as Anita (Rachel Leslie) asks her coupled friends Bing (Richard Lee) and Celine (Sochi Fried) to “eviscerate” her presentation in advance of the real thing, so that she can prepare for a potentially hostile committee. Anita’s mother was a Black female pioneer in epidemiology, her father a beloved white Yale professor.

Anita’s cosy house has an enormous kitchen island dwarfing the nearby table. Joshua Quinlan’s in-the-round design is attractive, with hidden depths off to the side similar to some of Crows’ other recent offerings (unfortunately, in this case not fully visible from all seats). Once belonging to her parents, the house is a hot property for the university, but Anita is about to secure its purchase. Why didn’t she inherit it? That’s one of the situation’s many sore points, covered in a lengthy and intricate discussion about ownership, belonging, and displacement.

Celine (white, with Canadian parents) and Bing (a Chinese immigrant) play good cop, bad cop to Anita’s presentation while fighting over Bing’s prospective return home. Fried nods furiously and snaps along as Anita lays out her goals, while Lee leans into his role as “the asshole” with relish, barking out questions before Anita finishes a sentence. 

Anita’s research involves the linguistic roots of racism, and how language itself can reinforce racial barriers. The wordplay in the title is a nod to the main character’s field, with both wight and white terms difficult to define. A wight is a humanoid being, usually associated with a mythical, ghost-like quality, like the frighteningly unseen creatures that bang at Anita’s door after trick-or-treaters have gone home. But wight also sounds like white, and whiteness is itself a shambling presence in the play, seen and unseen, that threatens to break down external barriers and intrude into Anita’s inner sanctum. 

Appel sets up a battle between the theoretical discussions of academia and the life-altering actions of the legal system. The latter is symbolized by Anita’s second husband, Danny (Ari Cohen); a lawyer who works to overturn wrongful convictions, he’s in part motivated by his paternal grandmother’s flight from Nazis during the Holocaust. When Danny finally arrives home after a long day in court, he finds new holes to poke in Anita’s treatise — but what actually gets cross-examined is their relationship, and how well they really know each other.

Appel’s pyrotechnic verbiage rarely lets up, particularly in an epic, explosive monologue impressively delivered by Cohen, who seems unhampered by the need to breathe. Leslie’s Anita is an evenly matched sparring partner, and one can easily see how the two might either connect or break apart, depending on where they direct their verbal fire. Ironically, for all Danny’s claims about the primacy of action, everything hinges on his choice of whether or not to speak a few words.

Not content with domestic drama, Appel strives for further intrigue with supernatural elements and a sci-fi framing device that turns the play into a conceptual nesting doll, showing the breakdown of her characters’ relationships as a symptom of a literal societal disease.

The genre-bending framing is a fascinating idea that pays off in a design sense, as surprises arise throughout the theatre. Thomas Ryder Payne’s sound portentously booms at opportune moments, video design (by Nathan Bruce) turns the playing space into an art installation at intermission, and Angela McQueen’s special effects reveal a growing rot inside and outside the home.

Thematically, this framing is less successful, the spread of the disease suggesting the playwright’s guiding point of view rather than letting the audience reflect on the complexity of the issues. Assigned clearer “sides” of right and wrong via the metaphor of disease, the characters flatten and the overall discussion loses some of its depth, an abrupt conclusion contributing to this gradual shallowing. As well, the subplot between Bing and Celine gets a bit lost, the latter character largely disappearing from the second half.

Anita has her world turned upside down just when everything seems to be coming together. Yet, even at her most shocked, Leslie exudes a weary expectation of disappointment, an epigenetic inheritance she feels is the only one she’s certain to receive. But, Wights itself is no disappointment; it’s a worthy start to a 2025 where it seems everything might fall apart.

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Wights runs at Crow’s Theatre until February 9. Tickets are available here.

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Intermission reviews are independent and unrelated to Intermission’s partnered content. Learn more about Intermission’s partnership model here.

WRITTEN BY

Ilana Lucas

Ilana Lucas is a professor of English in Centennial College’s School of Advancement. She is the President of the Canadian Theatre Critics Association. She holds a BA in English and Theatre from Princeton University, an MFA in Dramaturgy and Script Development from Columbia University, and serves as Princeton’s Alumni Schools Committee Chair for Western Ontario. She has written for Brit+Co, Mooney on Theatre, and BroadwayWorld Toronto. Her most recent play, Let’s Talk, won the 2019 Toronto Fringe Festival’s 24-Hour Playwriting Contest. She has a deep and abiding love of musical theatre, and considers her year working for the estate of Tony winners Phyllis Newman and Adolph Green one of her most treasured memories.

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