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CALGARY - Like the central character in her new drama Man Out of Joint, Calgary playwright Sharon Pollock is mad as hell and not about to take it anymore.
Through Man Out of Joint, Pollock hopes to draw attention to the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo Bay and specifically to Omar Khadr, the 20-year-old Canadian citizen captured in Afghanistan and subsequently charged with murder.
He was 15 at the time and has spent four years at Guantanamo Bay, allegedly suffering psychological, physical, emotional and mental abuse.
Joel Gianelli (Robert Hay) is a Toronto lawyer who agrees to defend a prisoner Ed Leland (Joel Cochrane) on a fraud charge. Leland claims he was just one of many people who had prior knowledge of the 9/11 terrorist plot and that once he is released from prison he will likely be assassinated.
When Joel gets Leland bail, the man sends him a package that leads Joel to Omar Khadr and a trip to Guantanamo Bay.
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Man Out of Joint is an angry play seething with emotion.
Pollock stacks the deck against her protagonist. A year earlier, Joel and his wife Suzanne (Carrie Schiffler) lost their three-year-old son in a drowning accident.
The scene in which Joel accuses Suzanne of negligence is devastating because Hay and Schiffler are so uncompromising. Joel has his hands full at work as well with his assistant Erin (Jill Belland), who one minute berates him for taking on controversial clients then dumps Leland in his lap.
As intriguing as Pollock's subject matter is, her play is structure and the way director Simon Mallett orchestrates the action allows characters from one area to comment on the action in another.
Pollock and Mallett have created five distinct areas on stage, including an imposing prison backdrop where detainees are tortured and abused regardless of what is happening elsewhere.
It's a constant reminder this is a play that wants us to react not just while we're watching it, but after we've left the theatre.
Pollock makes Joel lose his complacency. She hopes to do the same for everyone who sees her play.