About the Play:

The Carpenter is a full-length drama by Vittorio Rossi. What happens when a man of superhuman strength, will power, and death-defying love for his family enters mortal combat with the remorseless memories of a time gone by; a time when all the people in his world seemed to have turned against him? The concluding chapter in A Carpenter's Trilogy finds 82-year-old patriarch Silvio Rosato battling Alzheimer's and phantoms from his wartime past.

The Carpenter is Part 3 of the autobiographical A Carpenter's Trilogy; three powerful plays, inspired by true events, about an Italian family finding new life in Montréal over the course of 40 years. With part three, Silvio Rosato is an aging carpenter now inexplicably engaged in the dismantling of his own life, a life he had constructed with the care and devotion of a master builder. As events from Silvio's past come back to torment him, his hauntingly staged hallucinations grow more frequent, his moments of lucidity become fewer and fewer. When Carmela stares down her son and two daughters in a showdown over whether the Alzheimer's-stricken Silvio should be placed in palliative care, the heart-wrenching but beautifully cathartic story of a family, including Silvio, coming to grips with itself unfolds with an unmistakably poignant honesty. The Carpenter follows the events between May 2002 when Silvio's terminal dementia was diagnosed and his final days at a Ville LaSalle hospice in the fall of 2004. There is something old-fashioned, not to say timeless, in Vittorio Rossi's stagecraft as he cuts through the Gordian Knot of this family's ties. He is an author with an urgent story to tell and sets it down with the care of a dutiful son and with epic sweep, writing not just from the heart but with heartbreaking honesty.

The Carpenter premiered in 2007 at the venerable Centaur Theatre, the oldest English-language theatre in Montréal, and enjoyed an extended run.

Cast: 4 female, 5 male

What people say:

"The tears fell for the silver-haired patriarch Silvio whose disintegration and its effect on his family are the focus of The Carpenter. Taken together, Rossi's [A Carpenter's Trilogy] plays represent the heftiest addition to the Canadian dramatic canon since David French's Mercer Cycle or George F. Walker's East End Plays." — Montréal Gazette

"The Carpenter is arguably the best play I've seen in a very, very long time." — The Montréaler

About the Playwright:

Vittorio Rossi is a playwright, actor, director and screenwriter who grew up in the Ville-Émard neighbourhood of Montréal and still lives there. He has established himself as a significant Italian-Canadian voice on the English-Canadian stage. His plays have been produced in Montréal, Toronto, Ottawa, Vancouver, New York City, Boston, Syracuse, and The Stratford Festival in Ontario.