Content warning: This article mentions sexual assault.

St. Michael’s (SMC) Troubadours’s production of The Shawshank Redemption, which was held in Hart House between February 13–15, came at the perfect moment. 

Based on Stephen King’s novella, the play follows Andy Dufresne (Nezar El-Rayes), a New England banker who is convicted of murder and sentenced to life at the Shawshank State Penitentiary. There, he meets Red (Laurie Campbell), a prison veteran who gives Andy a rundown about how things work at the ‘Shank’ and provides the audience with intermittent narration. 

Over the 19 years that the story takes place, a Promethean Andy tussles and conspires with inmates, deals with a gang of rapists, and finds himself involved in a financial fraud scheme at the behest of the villainous Warden Stammas. Neve Chamberlain, a fourth-year U of T student studying neuroscience and molecular biology, directed The Shawshank Redemption.

The set in Hart House imposed upon the audience: a two-story façade of bricks and doors allowed the actors a great degree of movement and versatility on the stage. The brick texturing and concrete feel of the structure did a great deal in helping the audience place themselves in the prison. The consistency of the unchanging background of seemingly impenetrable walls did justice to the penitentiary’s premise. 

El-Rayes played a calm and calculated Andy who quickly adapted to the grime of prison life with the help of Campbell’s Red, his mentor. El-Rayes’ and Campbell’s scenes felt natural, so you could believably watch their friendship and camaraderie grow as the play progressed. This is especially difficult to accomplish when performing back-to-back shows — going from fresh acquaintances to old friends and reverting to fresh acquaintances again. 

For actors, it’s easy to grow comfortable with costars and forget that the characters are meant to be strangers to each other. That’s why it’s crucial to recognize the skill and effort applied by the cast to ground the play’s central relationship. From here on, Andy and Red do what they can to pass the time and make their internment bearable.

Lance Oribello — who plays Brooksie: an octogenarian, model prisoner, and prison librarian — was easily the play’s standout performance. His hunched back, limp, fragility, and the aching timbre of his voice came to actualize the story’s most tragic character. Brooksie is the vehicle for perhaps the play’s most important commentary on the brutal US prison-industrial complex. After being imprisoned for 50 years, Brooksie — like many other ex-cons — finds no support outside of prison and is unable to return to a normal life after his release. 

Bardia Nasri plays Bogs Diamond, the leader of the aforementioned gang of rapists who is a frequent nuisance to the prisoners and takes on the role of the antagonist for the first portion of the play. Nasri’s sleazy portrayal lent itself to creating a character defined by his insecurities. 

However, I thought Nasri felt somewhat removed from the rest of the cast at his emotional climax. Near the end of the first act, the prison guards discipline Bogs. Nasri clearly has a great deal of performative range — his shrieks and cries were disturbingly real. 

Yet, the dramatism might have been too much. No one else matched his intensity, which left the character looking out of place. He has what it takes to be a Shakespearian tragic hero, but he sometimes feels out of place in the atmosphere of this production. 

Another standout performance was from Serena Barr, who played Rooster and provided great comedic relief. Her performance as a twangy, short-tempered Southern hillbilly was perfectly expressed with her well-handled tone and timing. 

This is Barr’s fourth play at U of T, and the show’s program says she wanted to step out of her usual role to “show people that she’s not just a pretty blonde, but a pretty blonde with range.” 

I’d have to concur. 

However, of no other fault but the scripts, I found that Barr’s performance as Rooster did at times feel misplaced as a source of lighthearted comedy when Rooster also enrolled as a primary member of Bogs Diamond’s gang of rapists, making Rooster’s character seem incongruent. 

I also wish better effort was made in terms of costuming to show the passage of time. I was surprised to see Andy and the gang looking just as spry and youthful after 19 years of incarceration. Time takes a toll on people; time in prison takes an even greater one. They should not look the same at both ends. 

Interestingly, Warden Stammas was gender-swapped, with Taite Cullen taking on the role of the brutal dictator. Campbell spoke to The Varsity about the decision: “I think [it’s] added a really awesome perspective.” She said, “There’s a lot of Biblical references in [the story] […] giving a woman that kind of power to be like, ‘Okay, anybody can be evil, regardless of gender’… [So] you take this very maternal, biblical kind of figure and then just turn her into a monster.” 

I think it worked. Cullen’s imposing portrayal of the warden was intimidating and dislikeable. 

While Shawshank is a very masculine story, it’s really a story about hardship, relationships, and hope.