Timing is everything, as any Olympic runner, stand-up comic or monthly theatre critic will tell you.
As for the latter, timing is what tells me whether I can review a play that I’ve actually experienced or can only preview (and try to predict the quality of) what is to come in the near future.
The play that I can definitely (and definitively) recommend very highly is Courageous on now at the essential Tarragon Theatre, written by one of Canada’s most Shaw-like, wise, thoughtful and astonishingly comical playwrights, Michael Healey.
Healey is the very gifted author of the Dora Award–winning Drawer Boy, one of the most successful and well-crafted Canadian plays of the past decade. Courageous is really two interrelated one-act plays, both challenging the crucial questions of human rights, dignity, faith and how our decent country struggles to sustain each.
The themes are admirably deep.
A gay, Catholic, male justice of the peace refuses to marry a gay couple because of his religious belief, ruining his career and relationship with his own gay partner — and that’s only the first act.
The acting is sheer perfection (especially Tom Rooney, Patrick Gilligan, Maurice Dean Wint and Brandon McGibbon, but all the performances are first-rate), and the direction by Richard Rose, Tarragon’s artistic director, is crisp and top notch. A magnificent evening of live theatre — and uproariously funny as well! Please go. Courageous only runs until Feb. 7, so don’t delay.
Go to www.tarragontheatre.com for show information.
