Dressed as People: A Triptych of Uncanny Abduction
Created by A.M. Dellamonica, Amal El-Mohtar, Kelly Robson, & Margo MacDonald
Directed by Mary Ellis
Performed by Margo MacDonald
Toronto/Ottawa, ON | 75 mins
Dressed as People is a set of three monologues, each one from different characters deftly portrayed by Margo MacDonald, with scripts written by Kelly Robson, Amal El-Mohtar, and A. M. Dellamonica. All three monologues share common threads, though each of them is distinct, and there is certainly no fear of getting bored. Despite the set and costume changes on stage, it’s easy to believe that this isn’t fictional theatre, but rather the personal confessions of three women, and as such, it is captivating to watch.
“Confession” is probably the best term for it. As MacDonald’s second alter ego, a woman living on the edge of a forest in 1827, states about the Fair Folk: They want a story, the truer the better.
Dressed as People opens strong—and dark. MacDonald perfectly embodies an elderly nun teaching at a university in Alberta who derails her own lecture on Canadian literature to recount, in distressing detail, her years as a nun at an Irish “Magdalene laundry,” the name given to asylums—more like prisons, really—where teenage girls who got pregnant out of wedlock would be sent. Once there, the young girls were forced to work in the laundries, sleep in dormitories 40 to a room, and would be beaten for speaking Irish or stepping out of line. Many girls died, and once you realize that the vaguely-referenced “edgelands” are really a mass grave, you might start wishing you’d seen a different show.
Next, MacDonald adopts the character of a young woman in 1827 who was painfully in love with her best friend—another woman. Seven years before the action of the play, this “best friend” disappears into the woods, ostensibly snatched by the Fair Folk. And MacDonald’s character, not content to be mourning over unrequited love in 1820s Ireland, sets out on a mission to find the fairies.
The last part, written by Dellamonica, is at first an abrupt shift—it’s about a comedian who specializes in lesbian cruises in 2021. Gone is the horrific treatment of unwed girls or the unrequited love of two women, as we get a lesbian, quite open about who she is, giving us her cruise routine. Until, of course, it comes time for her confession as well—which, intriguingly, involves a mermaid. And her bedroom.
Margo MacDonald is a well-known name in Ottawa, and deservedly so. Each character is perfectly embodied—even the complexities of the nun, both an agent in the institutions for pregnant women and a victim of the nunnery’s own harsh rules, by far the most multifaceted character. There wasn’t a missed line, a skipped beat, not a glitch. It’s a heavy play, but competently handled by MacDonald.
Dressed as People is playing until February 18. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, ranging from $5 to $75. For more information and to purchase tickets, see the undercurrents schedule here.
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