SOURCE: Sidnell, Michael J. “Designers' Texts and Other Plays: The Stratford Festival 1990.” Journal of Canadian Studies 25, no. 4 (winter 1990-1991): 129-39.

In the following excerpt, Sidnell outlines flaws in the Avon Theatre's production of Pollock's One Tiger to a Hill and the weaknesses intrinsic to the play itself.

The third Canadian play was Sharon Pollock's One Tiger to a Hill, presented at the Avon Theatre. It might have fared better on the Third Stage, since the Avon proved too big and formal for Pollock's impassioned dramatization of her argument against cruelty, lies and cover-up in the prison system. It was an odd choice to make from Pollock's plays, since it appears to be flawed by talkiness, laborious demonstrations of the inhumanity of inhumane actions and the inclusion of superfluous characters for the sake of debate—to be inferior to her later work. The elaborate setting did not help the...