Casey and Diana: Stratford 2023 part I
12 Jun 2023

by Drew Rowsome - Photos by Cylla von Tiedemann

"You have to laugh to keep from dying." 
"Then tell me a million jokes."

When the kindly ushers at the Stratford festival put down their "Please Turn Off All Devices" signs to proffer Kleenex, it is obvious that Casey and Diana has moved the audience on a gut level. I freely admit to stifling sobs at the end of the first act and ugly crying though the climax of the second. That is not to say that Casey and Diana is a tearjerker or a manipulative AIDS play, the tears are cathartic. Shared with the rest of the audience lucky enough to be in attendance, with the remarkable cast, with the memories of those we lost, with the complicated emotions we all have around death and our own mortality. With the realization of just how close biting gay humour is to gallows humour. And how necessary both are.

Casey and Diana takes place at Casey House in the week leading up to Princess Diana's historic visit to the hospice. The visit that did so much to raise awareness and reduce stigma about AIDS by the simple human act of the royal guest holding the hands of the men afflicted with a disease we then knew so little about. And were so terrified of. Thomas, who is one of the longest survivors at Casey House, is obsessed with preparing for the visit and making sure that he makes an impression. He rehearses and fantasizes his encounter with the princess, and a version of her obligingly shows up. As played by Sean Arbuckle, Thomas is the life of the party. The conversation, more of a monologue though he does have the perfect and hilarious icebreaker question, is in fluent gay speak: humorous, bitter, and laced with pop culture references with a longing for glamour. Arbuckle is brilliant and plays achingly with Krystin Pellerin's Diana who radiates regal compassion and effortless poise.

But Diana's visit is just the hook for what playwright Nick Green (Dr Silver, Hackerlove, Dancing Queen) wants to explore. There are several other relationships revolving around Thomas's shared room, Casey House, and Diana's impending visit. Sophia Walker is the nurse who struggles to keep her emotions concealed—she is there to help, as she says, these men die with dignity—behind an efficient exterior. Linda Kash (Caroline, or Change) is a volunteer who develops an intense maternal relationship with new arrival Davinder Malhi who has multiple issues of his own. The volunteer already has a bantering relationship with Thomas. Laura Condlln (Fifteen Dogs, The Virgin Trial, Sisters, Fun Home, An Enemy of the People, Sextet) is Thomas's estranged, once very close, sister. All of them have complicated links with and reactions to AIDS as well as to each other. And with gay life. The cast, all exemplary, wrap their pain in gay speak, discover and reveal, and fire off zinging quips. They are all warm and fragile people we want to know, flaws and all. The reality they create does not encompass all the politics, fear and horror that was AIDS, but Green gifts us a multitude of experiences that meld with our own perceptions to create an empathy that outshines Diana's.

Director Andrew Kushnir (Towards Youth, Wormwood, Cock, The Gay Heritage Project) matches Green's heightened gay reality with an unobtrusive touch, moving the action seamlessly, expanding and shrinking the confined hospice room to match the emotional states and conflicts. Shifting in and out of Thomas's reality and fantasy. In one particularly vivid moment, a visceral reaction is drawn from the audience, that in a lesser play or production would be a dramatic moment. Instead it becomes a powerful flash of self-reflection as the main thematic conflict in Casey and Diana is revealed to be one of our own. It is closely matched by the final image, a simple but effective coup de theatre, that infuses a climax of exquisite pain with unbearable joy, transcending Green's clever parallel structure into pure emotional catharsis. 

Casey and Diana is getting a tragically short run but those who are lucky enough to experience it, will never forget it. Being produced at the Stratford Festival is an important factor in the impact. The midweek matinee I attended, was not a gay audience. Yes, there was a sprinkling of us homos (including two twinks proudly wearing souvenir Broadway musical t-shirts) but the majority of the audience was composed of presumably straight couples of a certain age. Serious festival patrons and theatregoers. And they all needed the provided Kleenex. The incredible thing that the cast and creatives of Casey and Diana have done, is to create an AIDS play that slices through our gender and sexuality barriers to get to the heart of what makes us similar, the humanity we share. Yes, Casey and Diana triggered my own personal memories and traumas, but it also achieves a universal context. A very gay, very powerful play flourishing in a suddenly no longer staid environment. Thomas keeps wondering why his, and Diana's, heads don't explode from all that is happening to them. It isn't their heads, it's the audience's hearts.