And I think every one of those people who got naked is a brave, beautiful person. And everyone who shared their own story was as well. Because of where my head was at while watching, I was barely controlling my emotional state as it was and participating more would have been very very difficult for me, and that just makes me admire the people who did all the more.

So for various reasons I wasn’t in the right headspace in this to get everything I should have out of it. I definitely plan to get another chance some day. I highly recommend that if you ever get a chance to participate in this, you do.

It also included a guy in a rooster hood (and literally nothing else) playing guitar while a really weird monologue played over him, to which he cocked his head whenever it said something strange.

But more seriously, the play is about “the psychology of the penis.” Other than the little bit of shock humor, the play is a series of anecdotes along those lines, with the female perspective represented by Keira McDonald and the male by Sage Price. I would have really liked more of the male perspective from Sage Price, personally, but it was interesting nevertheless. I did find that one anecdote from Keira, about a boyfriend of hers in the navy, kind of dragged on a bit and didn’t really link back thematically to anything else in the play. It unfortunately dominated the back half of the play.

Funny, entertaining, but not exactly the most amazing treatment of the subject I can imagine.

The play is full of mildly funny moments, and some of it is apparently improvised, but the actors don’t seem quite up to the task of the improvised segments. In one notable spot they completely broke character and even admitted to doing so. Possibly this play suffers from the exact opposite problem as the previously reviewed Fairy Tales Scratched, where it felt too much like improv and not enough like scripted.

It’s also possible the difficulties with the improv were just due to last show fatigue setting in. But overall, the only time the play came above chuckleworthy for me was when they broke character, and the greater themes weren’t explored in enough detail to make up for that. I just couldn’t get too engaged in this one.

Where the play kind of fell apart a little bit was in the ending, where the main character, up to that point a street urchin with a heart of gold, seems to make a rather selfish decision and abandons the one person he could have — and should have — helped. I had a lot of trouble understanding this decision and the play didn’t really help me make the leap. I also found the apparent sentiment of the last song — that the problems of a street kid can be somehow resolved by uprooting and moving somewhere else (north, in this case).

I’m just not really sure what moral we’re supposed to take out of this play, but I still felt like I was being moralized to. I found that a little frustrating.

I only knock it down a little bit because not every story held me enthralled. A couple of them had my interest fading, and one of them I don’t remember anything at all from. I also can’t say that the parts I really enjoyed were as good as those from Shorts, which I gave 5 stars in spite of one part of it not holding my interest.

One really random thing that stood out for me, though, that is completely irrelevant to the review, is that one of the actors was wearing Vibram Five Fingers. Which is awesome, because they are awesome, and I never would have expected to see someone on stage wearing them. That was win.

But there were several stories that I just found incredibly dull. Unfortunately including the linking story, Dr. Impossible. It didn’t really go anywhere and never held my attention. I just wanted the next sketch with puppets to start.

If there’s one problem the play has, though, it’s that the pacing is a little slow. I think some of that comes from the improv segment, where it would be difficult to pace it much faster and still keep the audience member on stage connected to the plot.

I really enjoyed this, it was really fascinating to see the progression of the character as her clothes come off, and whatever technical issues were hit in this play didn’t diminish my feeling that it was really quite beautiful.

That makes it really difficult to sympathize. There’s a whole Nice Guy vibe going through the play that I just found kind of unsettling. And you really have to wonder why someone would stay friends with someone who repeatedly kicked them in the nads, up into adulthood.

I also found the ending, which involves the death of the male character, kind of unnecessary. It didn’t really add to the message of the play and just left it feeling more maudlin than it already was with the unrequited love.

I give it as many stars as I have because I saw potential in it, but it really needed more work on the characterizations especially.

The play is full of funny moments like that, and is completely irreverent to just about anyone and anything imaginable. He even takes time out to diss Rick Mercer more than once.

If political humor is your thing, you should go see this one.

For the rest, it’s just too stretched out. The zombies appear too late, too slowly, and other than some mildly amusing gags nothing really happens. The singing is also, unfortunately, not that great. A couple of characters in particular really have trouble with their singing lines. But none of this really makes it unwatchable, it just means there’s more build up than necessary for the ending.

Also, they give out buttons. I <3 Brains buttons. Which is pretty awesome.