Stage/Theatre

What: Truth
Where: Young People’s Theatre, 165 Front St. E.
When: Now, until Fri., Feb. 23
Highlight: A joyous, well-placed musical number
Rating: NNNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: Playwright Kanika Ambrose and director Sabryn Rock reunite for sensitive, tween-appropriate drama.

PLAYWRIGHT Kanika Ambrose and director Sabryn Rock made a lasting impression with their 2022 collaboration our place, a hefty two-hour, one-act that painted a searing portrait of undocumented Caribbean workers employed at a jerk pork restaurant in Scarborough.

Their latest, Truth at Young People’s Theatre (YPT), runs just 70 minutes. But the historical drama, an adaptation of Caroline Pignat’s free verse novel The Gospel Truth, has a similarly fleshed-out emotional core — it just comes in a glossier, more tween-appropriate package. (According to the YPT website, the show is aimed at children aged 10 and up.)

It’s 1858 on a Virginia tobacco plantation and intelligent 16-year-old Phoebe (Jasmine Case), who is enslaved, hasn’t spoken a word since her mother was sent away a decade ago. While others spend their Sunday nights dancing, she largely keeps to herself, feeding peanuts to birds and learning to write in a secret journal.

A disruption comes in the arrival of one Dr. Bergman (Wade Bogert-O’Brien). Presenting as a scruffy ornithologist, he takes an interest in Phoebe as well as in the wary Will (Micah Woods), who was recently lashed for attempting escape. All this as rumours about undercover abolitionists circulate and Tessa (Dominique LeBlanc) — cruel, audacious daughter of drunken plantation owner Master Duncan (Jeff Miller) — makes shaky attempts to woo Bergman.

Rock has again proven herself a particularly strong director of actors. Though the subject matter is heavy, the cast scales the mountainous emotional terrain with cohesion. And Ambrose places a joyous musical number (a cappella aside from the forceful smacking of a wooden box) at a key juncture of the plot; performed without restraint, the sequence breaks up the tension, allowing audience members young and old a chance to breathe before the play’s explosive climax.

The visual world of Truth is less fully realized. Shannon Lea Doyle’s realistic costumes and Shawn Henry’s textured lighting get the production in the ballpark of its 19th-century setting, but the former’s set is something of a cipher. A large brick wall with columns, it’s a touch two-dimensional, not doing much to signpost the different locations on the plantation. (Toward the end of the play, a big design reveal explains why that wall looks the way it does — although it’s a stunning moment, I’m not convinced the trade-off is worth it.)

Like Cahoots Theatre’s recent Sweeter, Truth gives young audiences the opportunity to see North American history from a Black perspective (the first was set 20 years after the American Civil War, the second just before). It’s a vital and successful undertaking in both cases.

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