Hillary Pearson directed this piece, and her students clearly took the show to heart. The story is based on the book by Sister Helen Prejean, detailing her experience as a spiritual counselor for death row inmates. In Tim Robbins’ adaptation, Sister Helen Prejean agrees to help death row inmate Matthew Poncelet who has been convicted in the murder of an eighteen-year-old couple, both of them brutally beaten and the young woman raped before being shot with a shotgun. Helen finds herself treading a painful path – attempting to help an apparently remorseless killer while the families of the victims feel that she is more concerned about the murderer than she is about the young people who were murdered. The dynamic makes for several emotionally powerful scenes that allow us to fairly consider both sides of the capital punishment debate, challenging our emotions and our minds.

Amy Northrop is Sister Helen Prejean, displaying a soothing calmness as she tries to follow the path she believes God wants her to follow based on caring for her neighbor, hoping for their redemption no matter their past. But Amy also captures her character’s inner anguish as the parents of the victims turn on her, and as the voices of the victims haunt her. It all builds to the climactic moment when she makes one last, forceful effort to get Matt to finally deal with what happened that night.

Sean Faley is the other half of that riveting scene as Matthew Poncelet, the man on death row. Sean gives a strong performance as the self-confident, prideful, bigoted man who slowly, reluctantly gains more self-awareness through his relationship with Sister Helen. The character he creates in the beginning makes his growing self-awareness all the more compelling as he comes to accept responsibility, and all the more tragic as his time runs out. They nail the human drama with the realistic awkwardness of his last meeting with his family, and his parting with his mother that ends with her collapsing and his voice cracking as he’s led away asking, “Is my mom okay?”

A couple of the other standouts include Christine Doidge, the mother of the female victim Hope (Amanda Steinfeld), describing the last words she shared with her daughter. And Matt’s mother, played by Sumayah Ferris, does very well as she talks to the parole board, wondering what she did wrong. As a whole, the cast does a great job in their various roles, and the ensemble shines in such scenes as the meeting of a victim’s support group and in the chilling conclusion.

Performs November 13 - 16, 2008.

Rob Hopper
National Youth Theatre

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