By Brian Clark. Directed by John Cooper. A Realwheels Theatre production. At the Historic Theatre at the Cultch on Wednesday, March 12. Continues until March 22

The acting is terrific and the issue is important, but Whose Life Is It Anyway? sometimes forgets that it’s a play.

At the centre of Brian Clark’s 1978 script is Ken Harrison, a sculptor who has been paralyzed from the neck down in a car accident. His condition has stabilized and he has regained his intellectual capacities, but his spinal-cord injury means that he will never recover the use of his body. Ken wants to be discharged from the hospital, a proposition that’s unthinkable to the doctor in charge of his care, as it will mean Ken’s certain death. At issue is the patient’s right to choose.

Clark adapted the stage version of the script from an earlier teleplay, which explains the piece’s somewhat wonky structure. We know what’s at stake from the beginning, and that conflict repeats rather than develops. The absence of Ken’s loved ones seems like a convenient contrivance on the playwright’s part, keeping the right-to-die debate firmly in the mouths of health-care workers and lawyers, some of whose dialogue is painfully artificial. The play also features gratuitous romantic subplots, and its climactic sequence feels like old-school television drama.

Despite the script’s limitations, the evening is largely a success, thanks to the exceptional cast and creative team assembled by director John Cooper. Pam Johnson’s clean, elegant set is beautifully lit by Adrian Muir, and placed front and centre for the entire two-plus hours is Bob Frazer’s Ken, immobile from the neck down in his hospital bed. As written, Ken is playful, articulate, and witty (which seems to have a lot to do with his doctors’ reluctance to let him die; would they be so “professional” if the patient were angrier or less eloquent?), and Frazer brings both charm and vulnerability to the role. Also outstanding are Patti Allan as the tight-lipped, no-nonsense nurse, Sister Anderson, whose deadpan volleys are launched with lethal timing as she obsessively straightens Ken’s sheets; Jennifer Lines as the sensitive Dr. Scott, torn between her oath and her obvious sympathy with Ken’s wishes; and Dawn Petten as a comically sincere social worker.

Perhaps what’s most striking about Whose Life Is It Anyway? is how polarizing the right-to-die debate still is, more than 35 years after this play was written. A production that makes us grapple with a question so fundamental to our humanity deserves attention.