Evidence to the Contrary

David E. Kemp is chair of the Drama Department at Queen’s University
and author of The Pleasures and Treasures of the United Kingdom.

This deeply moving play about euthanasia takes the form of a series of
interviews involving a police inspector and a woman suspected of ending
her mother’s life. Over the course of the play, the inspector’s
initial antagonism toward the accused gives way to fascination and, by
the end of the play, solidarity.

Since its Montreal premiиre in 1988, Evidence to the Contrary has had
more than150 performances in Quebec, and has achieved international
recognition in the U.S., Holland, Germany, and France, where it was
published in 1992. It will be produced in London this year and is being
translated into Spanish and Italian.

Hélиne Pedneault is well known in Quebec not only as a playwright but
also as a songwriter, essayist, fiction writer, biographer, and
print/broadcast journalist. Her deeply felt and poetic play forces us to
confront both the mortality of those we love and, indeed, the nature of
our own existence.