GET YOURSELF HOME SKLYER JAMES by Jordan Tannahill. 918 Bathurst Basement. July 8 at 8 pm, July 9 at 2 and 8 pm, July 10 at 8 pm. Buy tickets. Rating: NNNN
Jordan Tannahill‘s 2009 play dramatizes the true story of Private Skyler James, whose life is made hell on her army base in Kentucky after she is outed as a lesbian. When constant harassment turns to death threats, she flees to Canada seeking refugee status.
The set-up for the play is awkward, forcing James to tell her life story to her unseen girlfriend on the other side of a locked door. Nevertheless, it is a fierce solo play made riveting by Natasha Ramondino’s extraordinary performance as this unsophisticated but bold young woman who can’t understand why her sexuality should cause persecution and exile from a country she loves.