Casey and Diana chronicles a moment of compassion in AIDS crisis

Historic visit by Princess of Wales to Toronto hospice Casey House in 1991 is the setting of moving and funny play at Theatre Aquarius Feb. 19 to March 8. More than 30 years on, that day still resonates.

Casey and Diana, coming to Theatre Aquarius this month, tells a story about a time when humanity lost its compassion and a much-loved princess showed us the way back. 

It’s the story of Princess Diana’s historic 1991 visit to Casey House, an AIDS hospice in Toronto, at the height of the devastating pandemic. Photos of the princess holding hands with HIV-positive patients were seen around the world and began to change the stigma that had led to devastating treatment of those with AIDS. 

While the setting of this play is now well over 30 years ago, it is an era we forgot or minimize at our peril. Casey House emerged in a Toronto where people died of AIDS alone and without any human compassion shown to them. They were discarded out of fear and homophobia and judgement.  

Director Andrew Kushnir says AIDS is not the antagonist of the play, though it would be tempting to make it so because it has claimed the lives of over 40 million people, including nearly 25,000 Canadians since this country’s first case in March 1982.

“AIDS is a tempting foe for what it has taken from us and so many of our peers, let alone what it has taken from the parents and lovers and friends still among us who survive those lost,” he wrote in the program notes when the play premiered at the Stratford Festival in 2023.

“The villain is how criminally long it took for the world to change. We — our collective humanity — could not muster enough care fast enough to avert disaster and catastrophic loss.”

Tim McClemont, executive director of the Positive Health Network, which provides services in Hamilton, Halton, Haldimand-Norfolk and Brant, was thrilled to hear that Theatre Aquarius was staging Casey and Diana because the subject of the play resonates today. 

“The issue of stigma is still as relevant as it was back then, when Diana shook the hand of the patient at Casey House. There was a worldwide impact from that … it was a pretty groundbreaking thing,” says McClemont, who has worked in HIV care for many years and lost his first partner to AIDS.

Diana’s visit came at a time when governments weren’t taking enough action and an HIV diagnosis was a death sentence. But the play isn’t just history, says McClemont.

“It’s another opportunity for enhanced awareness about HIV now as it stands, not only in 2025 but in this area, too.”

The Positive Health Network (formerly the AIDS Network) will bring groups of staff, volunteers and clients to see the play and will also provide one of its memorial quilts to hang in a reflection space at Theatre Aquarius.

‘Pinching myself’

When Catherine Wreford auditioned for Casey and Diana last year, she went for the role of nurse Vera at Casey House in Toronto. The idea of playing Princess Diana was too intimidating. After all, she remains an iconic figure 27 years after her death and Wreford, a native of Winnipeg, would have to act with a British accent. 

But then she got a call asking if she’d consider trying out for the role of the Princess of Wales. She auditioned by Zoom last summer and landed the role. She’s still pinching herself.

“I can’t believe this is my life right now … I’m just feeling very honoured to be a part of this,” she says during the first week of rehearsals at Theatre Aquarius.

It’s not that Wreford doesn’t know pressure. She’s performed on Broadway and was the winner of season 8 of The Amazing Race Canada with best friend Craig Ramsay in 2022. 

That all pales in comparison to the battle Wreford has been waging since 2013, when she was told she has brain cancer and likely had two to six years to live. The mother of two has been an advocate for those with the disease ever since.

So she feels a kinship to this story and its themes of death, grief and compassion.

Wreford, who is a trained nurse, says she can’t count on two hands all the people with cancer she has sat with as they died.  

“I've taken every day I have as a gift and every day as an advocate for all this shit, all this stuff that hasn't been solved yet, like brain cancer, so many people die from it, and there is no cure. It makes it so similar to how I live my life, like how Diana was pushing for a cure (for HIV). So for me, I'm doing that with brain cancer,” she says.

‘Funny and beautiful’

This is the third staging of Casey and Diana. After Stratford, it came to Toronto’s Soulpepper Theatre in 2024 with much of the same cast and only tweaks in the staging. 

The cast for the run at Aquarius is entirely new and the stage design is different but director Kushnir is back after taking the helm of the previous two productions. Playwright Nick Green, who works as a social worker in Toronto, will be heavily involved this time, too.

“Andrew has an amazing knowledge of the play and its backstory. He was part of the development of it. He knows the scenes that were cut,” says actor Gregory Prest, who hails from Pictou, Nova Scotia and now lives close to Casey House.

“But what he has been so wonderful about is giving us the space. He's letting us explore. This is a brand new thing and he’s excited by that and he’s been nothing but open. He wants to create something new.”

Prest plays Thomas, the unofficial mayor of Casey House and its longest resident when Princess Diana visits on Oct. 25, 1991. He is her biggest fan. 

Prest saw the production at Soulpepper and found it deeply moving. It’s so important for the times we are living in.

“The idea and practice of compassion is essential to where we are, giving space for people to be able to see themselves reflected in a way that gives them value,” says Prest, an actor, writer and director with a long list of credits and awards in each category to his name. He has twice been listed in the Top Ten Theatre Artists of the Year by Now Magazine, been nominated for 18 Dora Mavor Moore Awards, and shortlisted for the Pauline McGibbon Award for emerging director. 

Prest feels a personal connection to this play.

“Among being funny and beautiful and so relatable, I feel like the play, really, it was my experience. Like it holds a container for the audience to experience grief, experience loss in a controlled way, that just sort of opens you up. It's unbelievable what the play does. It kind of takes your hand.”

So how is Wreford, whose credits include 42^nd Street, Oklahoma! A Chorus Line and Fun Home, approaching the role of Diana, among the most beloved figures of our time?

“You know, what (director) Andrew (Kushnir) said to me is, ‘I don't want you to imitate her. I want it to be you coming from you and your experience with all of these things that have surrounded you and that's what I'm doing. I have to have a British accent but he doesn't want me to try to make my voice sound like hers, or anything like that. It's just me encompassing everything that she felt and that she believed and that she was compassionate about and kind about, and listening to the people who are telling me these stories.”

And Wreford also feels a direct connection to Diana’s struggles.

“I'm not a princess, but I do feel as though a lot of the stuff she struggled with, like anorexia, and bulimia and dealing with all this pressure on her, I dealt with all of that. I was engaged to a really famous man, Jeff Goldblum, and so like she had to be with Charles, I had to be dressed right and my hair had to be right.”

This will be the Theatre Aquarius debut for both Wreford and Prest, though he is frequently in Hamilton.

“My sister lives here and I come to visit her quite often. And I’ve known a lot of people who have worked at Aquarius, so it’s nice to spend time here. It’s a beautiful theatre,” Prest says. 

“Like, gorgeous. It really is,” echoes Wreford. “We were in the balcony yesterday during an interview, and I was like, this is magical.”

Casey and Diana is a Theatre Aquarius co-production with the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre. The actors and crew will close Hamilton on March 8 and open in Winnipeg on March 19. 

Casey House: A place of hope

Casey House opened in a Victorian home near Toronto’s Gay Village in 1988 thanks to the tireless work of journalist and writer June Callwood and those she recruited to the cause. It  was Canada’s first-free standing AIDS hospice. The name is a tribute to Callwood’s son who died after being struck by an impaired driver while riding his motorcycle. 

According to playwright Nick Green: “The word Casey means not being alone when you need people the most. Casey is the meeting point of fear and comfort, pain and compassion, loss and love. Casey is trying to make someone’s life a bit better, even when that seems totally impossible. Casey is a hand to those facing feelings that words fail to describe.” 

Prior to Casey House, gay men in Toronto were dying in hospitals alone and isolated. Many had been abandoned by their families and lack of understanding about how the virus was spread meant that healthcare providers did not want to touch or even get near the sick. There was no dignity and no hope until Casey House opened its doors to provide palliative care.

And when photos of the Princess of Wales holding patients’ hands during her historic visit hit newspapers around the world, it shifted public attitudes. 

Casey House has grown from a hospice into a specialty hospital providing holistic care to people living with and at risk of HIV. In 2017, it moved across the street into a 58,000-square-foot facility. In addition to a 14-bed inpatient unit, there is an outpatient program providing a range of health services and social supports, including nutrition programs, tax clinics and dentistry services. The clinical team builds relationships through a harm reduction approach, and in 2021, opened Ontario’s first hospital-based supervised consumption service for clients who use substances.

Kushnir and Green toured Casey House and met with staff as the play was being created. CEO Joanne Simons was also invited to meet the cast as they workshopped for the first run at Stratford. 

“Andrew and Nick are just two of the best humans I have ever had the opportunity to meet just generally, but they've been incredible through this production. They tried to include us in all of the productions. Obviously, Stratford was the biggest engagement for us, but certainly Soulpepper did a great job and made sure that we felt really special.”

The play is very funny and that reflects the atmosphere of Casey House, says Simons. 

“When Nick came to tour, we talked about that. And certainly folks that he met who had worked back in the day when Princess Diana visited, talked about the gallows humor, the dark humour that helped staff and patients get through.” 

The last staff member who was there for the Princess’s visit has just retired, says Simons.

The Princess of Wales’ visit was a touchstone moment in the history of Casey House that continues to resonate today, says Simons, who became CEO in 2016. For the residents of the hospice at the time and even for those today who weren’t alive in 1991, her kindness that day is a “validation of who they are and that they are worthy,” she says.

“Interestingly, around the anniversary of the visit, around the anniversary of her death, and also her birthday, we still receive media interest about that visit, because it was so monumental in the (AIDS) movement, and it continues to be, I think, a real validation for the community, that a princess would come and visit Casey House. It is still part of the ethos and certainly the storytelling that happens within these four walls.”

HIV today

Today’s HIV-positive population looks vastly different than it did in the 1980s and 1990s. It is more diverse and much more likely to be battling racism, discrimination, poverty, homelessness, mental health and addiction, says Simons.  

An HIV diagnosis now, rather than a death sentence, is a lifetime sentence of drug cocktails to manage viral loads. There remains no cure but when managed properly, people can live long and healthy lives. 

But many don’t have the resources to manage their condition, says Simons. Much of the work that Casey House does today is around helping people with their basic needs.

“Where we are today is really thinking about people who face systemic barriers to accessing healthcare, certainly from both a prevention and treatment perspective, and so we focus now, I think, a great deal in terms of both physical health, but also mental health.”

Rates of HIV in Canada are actually increasing, especially in the African, Caribbean and Indigenous communities and among trans people. More refugees are also arriving with the disease from countries where it is endemic. And, of course, drug use continues to be tied to increased risk of HIV. 

Though we may be a long way from the homophobia and fear evident at the peak of the AIDS epidemic, those with HIV are still stigmatized, says Simons.

“If you are diagnosed with a cancer, typically, you know your community, your friends, your networks, reach out to say, ‘How can I support and embrace you?’ With a diagnosis of HIV, people want to know about how you contracted it, and why didn't you prevent it. And there's a real essence of blame associated with contraction of HIV, and that manifests itself throughout somebody's life. Our clients really do report it being much worse than the disease itself.”

To learn more about Casey House, listen to With Dignity: The Story of Casey House. It’s a four-part podcast hosted by Casey and Diana playwright Nick Green that delves into the incredible stories behind this iconic Toronto institution.