From left to Right: Jane Rees, Sophia Radford, Jeremy Sinclair, Zoe Salvin, Jennifer Bayne, Ryan Kniel

I saw Theatre Inconnu’s very good production of Wendy Lill’s 1991 play Sisters, which looks at the difficult topic of residential schools and the nuns who taught in them. We learn about the life of Sister Mary, who has become a nun after experiencing a calling, and leaves behind a boy who would have married her. She begins working at a residential school where we see and hear about the lives of the Indigenous children who attended these schools. Some try to run away, but are chased down by dogs. Some make a successful escape, never to return. We hear that the students are subjected to caning, common at the time, as the play is set in the late 60s/early 70s.

Sister Mary is played by two actors, Sophia Redford plays Young Mary and Jennifer Bayne the mature Mary. Both do lovely work in their respective roles, although Bayne has the heavier lifting, and effectively portrays Mary’s search for both God and meaning in the work she has undertaken for over 25 years. We see her meeting with a Jewish lawyer who has moved to Canada to avoid the draft into the Vietnam War. Why is she talking to a lawyer? Well, I won’t spoil the plot for those who may plan to see the show, but she has taken a drastic action that will have serious consequences.

As we travel through the play, we find out more about Mary’s backstory, her struggles with her faith and her guilty conscience about her work at the residential school. We also learn about the other nuns who work at the school. There is Sister Gabriel, who is a bundle of nerves, and Mother Agnes, who dominates the nuns under her control. Gabriel is well-played by Zoe Salvin and Mother Agnes by Jane Rees, who finds multiple levels in her characterization. Ryan Kniel plays the Jewish lawyer Stein with good authority, letting us see glimpses of his struggles with his parents and his girlfriend, and Jeremy Sinclair plays Louis, a farmer who loves Young Mary with simple clarity.

The play is directed well by Kevin McKendrick, who pulls strong performances out of his cast and keeps things moving at a good pace throughout this nearly 2 hour play. Artistic Director Clayton Jevne provided the lighting design, while actor Kniel does sound, offering familiar songs from the 60s to underscore the period. Madeleine Mills designed the costumes, which work well. Overall, this is a very good production of a play worth seeing. Lill went on to become an NDP MP and has written a number of other plays, including The Glace Bay Miners’ Museum, which I was fortunate enough to perform in at the Phoenix Theatre in 1999. She has always had a strong sense of social justice, so I can see how well this play sits in her work, focussed as it is on the injustice and cruelty of residential schools, even by the most well-meaning of those who worked in them. Recommended. Runs until March 9th with tickets available at https://www.theatreinconnu.com/sisters/