THE SAINTS AND APOSTLES Raymond Storey Toronto, Playwrights Canada Press, 1993. 91pp, paper, $10.95 ISBN 0-88754-514-9. CIP Grades 12 and up/Ages 17 and up Reviewed by Pat Bolger Volume 22 Number 3 1994 May/June Storey's characters are an interesting group: Michael, mid-thirties, successful in his career in the theatre, a homosexual who escapes into his work and drinking; Madeline, his worldly-wise housemate; and Daniel, who says he is "taking a year off to be gay, and twenty-one, and living in Toronto," and moments later admits he is HIV-positive. Michael's mother, Rita, and Daniel's father, Peter, comment from a distance, loving their children but utterly unable to be close to them. Peter's attempts to be supportive in Daniel's fight with AIDS seem only to deepen their estrangement, and the intimacy that Daniel hoped to find in an affair with Michael is simply unattainable. The handling of dialogue is a strength here. It is often humorous, as in Madeline's description of leaving her abusive husband, but Storey writes strongly dramatic speeches too: "Saints are not innocent. It is not virtue if, by some accident, some happy ignorance, we can remain outside, unmoved, un-touched." Theatre arts students will be interested in the structure here, especially in the layered effect of the many short scenes, in which characters recount events from their different viewpoints. Mature readers will find their sympathies engaged by the unhappy characters in the play, which is not really about homosexuality or AIDS, but about the inability to love. Pat Bolger is a retired high school teacher-librarian in Renfrew, Ontario.