This is not a cute ad for a hospital fundraiser.
Nor is it even a gritty, hard-hitting story about the horrors of cancer or the evils of drunk driving.
This plunges deeper.
‘Vitals’ by Rosamund Small and directed by Alaine Hutton is a terrifying plunge into the nightmarish events encountered by first responders and paramedics, and the tragic scars they bear every day.
The one-woman production features Dr. Janet McMordie, whose fiery performance is the heart of the show. As an untrained actor, McMordie is humble about her acting inexperience, but as a paramedic herself, she brings power and integrity to this deeply moving play.
Originating through interviews and stories from real-life paramedic experiences, Vitals describes a variety of episodes that profoundly affect the mental and physical health of the paramedic, Anna. It is so personal that the audience literally and figuratively squirms.
It begins with Anna stripping out of her ‘civies’ right down to her bare essentials, inviting us into her vulnerability. She then slowly puts on her ‘uniform’ to complete the transition into the professional world, but as McMordie states, there is no ‘separation’ between the uniform and the person.
Anna then describes a series of ‘vignettes,’ but that word is too soft to describe the monstrous experiences that so deeply affect her. A subway jumper whose body is never found, a yoga instructor who has sliced himself and is bleeding all over his studio, a woman whose arms are literally hacked off. Suicide efforts too awful to describe.
McMordie projects all of this and more without a single prop and on a bare bones stage. The terror is conveyed through facial expression and gesture. Her expressive eyes describe fear, pity, loathing, and horrifying dread. As she tries to prevent suicide, ironically, suicide itself seeps into her own being.
Macabre irony is built into these stories to punctuate the horror. A professionally perfect response ends in the death of a baby anyway. Anna’s telephone ringtone is a siren. Perhaps most grim of all – if you want to survive a suicide, jump in front of a moving ambulance! Gruesome irony overwhelms the stage.
A final horror stops even the squirming – the audience is arrested.
The soundscape, by S. Quinn Hoodless and Drew Thomas, deftly mimics the revulsion with harsh sound bites and heavy metal.
There were sound problems as the audience strove to hear some of Anna’s lines. Background sound sometimes overwhelmed her lines, or her speech was extremely soft. If we miss a few notes in an opera, so be it. But this script demands every syllable to be heard. The tech team needs some creativity.
Small offers sporadic touches of humour – even Macbeth had its Porter scene. Anna rails against j-walkers in front of ambulances – come on. She also describes the lunacy of a strangely calm receptionist, placidly pointing toward the bloodbath in the yoga studio. Even if the humour is dark, McMordie suggests that it sometimes ‘keeps us going.’
This is a very personal story, and it is reflected in McMordie’s powerful performance and her post-curtain comments. Both Small and McMordie are doing a great service in highlighting, without cosmetics, the sometimes-brutal work and personal sacrifices made every day by paramedics and all first responders.
Special notes:
For every performance, live music by actual front-line workers in Ontario is played before curtain.
Proceeds from ticket sales go to Frontline Families Canada, who support families of fallen first responders.
It really does ‘take a village.’
A SECOND ACT ACTOR PRODUCTION in co-operation with Toronto’s FACTORY THEATRE presents
‘Vitals’ by Rosamund Small
Performer: Dr. Janet McMordie
Director: Alaine Hutton
Lighting designer: Theodore Belc
Sound designer: S. Quinn Hoodless, Drew Thomas
Stage manager: Stephanie Taylor
Runs through: May 10, 2026.
Tickets: factorytheatre.ca
