Love and Anger

Joan McGrath is a Toronto Board of Education library consultant.

One of the most successful Canadian plays of recent years, Love and
Anger concerns the workings of power and politics in a great Canadian
city that is never identified, though it is very plainly Toronto. Walker
does not like the way that, more and more often, ordinary unhappy people
are ground up and tossed aside: “You begin with anger and energy: but
then you face things—and you meet the emptiness that you’re afraid
of.” Petie Maxwell, Walker’s hero, has suffered a change of
personality and of direction. He has returned to the idealism of his
youth, which was stripped away during his training in cynicism in law
school and beyond. Now he has only one client: Gail Jones needs his help
to get her husband released from jail, to which he was sent as a
scapegoat for the crimes of the real criminals—the “big guys.” In
his attempt to assist her, Petie brings the representatives of power and
corruption to a symbolic trial in his grubby basement office, accusing
them of “lack of respect for the essential mysteries of life.” Love
and Anger is a powerful theatrical experience, and at least some of the
power survives in its appearance in print. The script is illustrated
with stills of the original cast in action.