Don’t be guilty of missing
Guilt (a love story)

Diane Flack’s one-woman show tells tales of guilty pleasures and disappointments

By Byron Toben

March 20, 2024

The Centaur Theatre has wisely selected a one-woman show originally performed at Toronto’s Tarragon Theatre to lead off its spring season. That show, Guilt (a love story), was written and performed by Lachine-born Diane Flacks. The athletic Ms. Flacks bounded about a bare stage – one chair, a water bottle – while regaling the audience with her tales of guilty pleasures and disappointments.

She included Jewish guilt, parental guilt, separation guilt, as well as love for a horse (I wasn’t sure if it was a racehorse or just a farm horse), coupled with physical aches and pains, a raccoon in her forehead, numbness from a stroke, biblical references (Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel, Lot’s wife), coming out as a lesbian and fantasizing as being Wonder Woman, bracelets and all.

And yet, she concluded that guilt is good as a shield (which reminded me of the movie Wall Street where Michael Douglas as Gordon Gekko proclaimed that “Greed is good.” (Guilt good, greed good, let’s call the whole alliteration thing off, I mused.)

At the March 15 press opening post-show veggie buffet (suppressing guilty desires for meat), the applause was loud for attendees Maurice Podbrey (first artistic director of Centaur), his wife, Elsa Bolam (founder of Geordie Theatre) and Mike Payette (Artistic Director of Tarragon) as well as for Guilt stage director Alisa Palmer.

Guilt (a love story) continues at the Centaur until March 30.

centaurtheatre.com

Images: Cylla von Tiedemann

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Byron Toben, a past president of The Montreal Press Club, has been WestmountMag.ca’s theatre reviewer since July 2015. Previously, he wrote for since terminated websites Rover Arts and Charlebois Post, print weekly The Downtowner, and print monthly The Senior Times. He also is an expert consultant on U.S. work permits for Canadians.