Though Brent Hirose shows promise as an actor, the play itself seems a broken and jumbled mess of characters who lack realistic motivation, plot turns that often don’t seem possible (even within the fantastic frame set up by the opening monologue) let alone practical, and poor set design that has Brent spending almost more time manipulating his props and doing sound effects for them than acting.

Occasionally a little piece of satire is thrown in to the play that seems either out of place or a part of a more biting play about media mismanagement and law enforcement incompetence. These little bits just serve to distract from the already weakly put together plot.

But like I said, Brent Hirose shows great promise as an actor (which may even have already been realized in other plays he’s been in). Both the opening and closing monologues are really well delivered, and almost manage to pull this play out from mediocrity.

Crammed into the corner of the tiny little Wunderbar BYOV space is what looks like a cross between an electric chair and a dentist’s chair. Mounted on and around the chair are lights of various intensity (some on dimmers) and direction. As Chris performs, he controls which lights are on through a Star Trek captain’s chair-like control panel on the arm.

As he switches from topic to topic, and from persona to persona (think split personalities) the lighting is used to incredible effect to portray him, literally and figuratively, in a different light.

The stories are funny, especially when he starts asking the audience if they’ve “ever felt that way” about something, always met with a perfect stony silence from the audience, and a resigned “oh” from Chris. Sometimes they’re a little sad, but he always keeps it from getting morose by switching the lights and saying something absurd to lighten the mood.

Anne Wyman gets the mannerisms that would make for a perfect sexy librarian — think Fred from Angel. She mumbles and jabbers and says things both dirty and absolutely normal in a voice of such innocence and naivite that you can’t help but like her and laugh at nearly everything she says.

The B-plots, which tie in to the main plot towards the end, focus on a sex advice columnist who’s seen and done it all, and the main character’s sister who committed suicide at 14 and currently resides in hell. It is this latter b-plot that prevents this play from being perfect, as it seems to not really impact the main plot in any meaningful way. It also pulls the play away from being an unlikely tale to being an impossible one, and to no gain, as it doesn’t tie in until the very last scene.

It kind of feels like this plot is a remnant of an earlier draft where it was more important, but it’s impossible to say. Overall, this is an awesome play and definitely worth seeing.

At the same time, I can’t help but feel uncomfortable about making light of mental illness and the damage that can be inflicted by 9-5 drudgery on those who are mentally ill.

I had slightly higher hopes for this play given it’s written and directed by the team who did The Overnight last year, which was one of my absolute favorites of that year. I didn’t find this one nearly so creative or innovative.

Quite the opposite from The Overnight, where they maximized the use of 2 actors incredibly well, I felt this play really needed a fourth player to improve the interactions between the main three and the occasional fourth. The switching was never quite so obvious as it should have been, and always involved a main character leaving the stage when I wanted to have their take in it as well.

For most of this play I felt like it was struggling to walk that line. Despite a good cold opening where Sharon manages to almost make coveralls sexy, most of the play is heavy on information and light on entertainment. But then the ending came out and it was stunning. I won’t say much about it except that it involves glowing balls, stockings, heavy beat trance music, and the lights dimmed down really low. It was a perfect exemplar of some of the best modern burlesque has to offer (and she points out that there are three burlesque troops in Edmonton). It also immediately rectified the balance of the play as a whole.

It might have been better if the balance had been better throughout the show, but maybe then the ending wouldn’t have been so great. One way or another, I don’t think you can go wrong with this play. You will be informed and you will be entertained.

The real fun of this show, though, is in the clever ways she brings the audience into it. Though she asks people to come up on the stage, she gives them opportunities to escape being the center of attention. But if you’re a very tall, well traveled, and employed man who’s compulsively honest odds are good you’ll be on stage. Take from that what you will.

The play appears to be a kind of catharsis. The author puts the random happenstance of a negative period in her life into the context of a game where an all-knowing narrator deals her life in chance cards. It’s a powerful metaphor humorously delivered (even the worst card somehow manages to be funny).

Though not my favorite so far, it was definitely a solid show.

With Rabbit Rabbit, though, I couldn’t do that. This play forced me to think about it as I walked home. I largely chose it because it was the most provocative and demented play description I’ve ever read in a Fringe guide. I’ll quote the description verbatim here:

“Larry, a paedophilic birthday clown, is on a “date” with Britney, a sixteen year old prostitute. If Britney gets another shitty score from a client, her pimp will throw her out. Larry wants his usual girl, twelve-year-old Sabrina, but she’s busy. It is D-Day in this motel room.”
- Fringe Guide

I was expecting this to turn out to be some kind of turn of phrase somehow, as provocative descriptions in the guide often are. But no, this is a completely accurate and correct description of what this play is about.

A play that wants to talk about pedophilia in an even remotely serious way (and this play is mostly serious, with jokes and funny awkward moments thrown in very appropriately to break the tension) it has to walk a really fine line. It has to make you sympathize with the main character just enough to be able to follow him through his story, but not so much that you feel the need to cleanse your brain with bleach for sympathizing with a dirty pedophile.

This play does a really good job of walking that line, though. It avoids committing you to watching anyone actually *enjoy* anything they’re going through that people would find morally objectionable (and never goes through with any of those acts), and I think that helps a lot. The two characters are so plainly in pain at their predicaments that you can sympathize with their plights without condoning their actions.

But this play asks a lot of really tough questions. Questions that probably don’t have any real answers. So if you can handle the subject matter, it will make you think. And for that, I think it’s worth seeing, even if it is a hard one to swallow.

Monsieur Lazhar has been hired as a substitute for a teacher who committed suicide in her classroom while the class was out for recess. Understandably, the class is having trouble dealing with it, and Lazhar’s own past makes it difficult for him to confront it as well, but also probably makes him the perfect person to help the students do so.

Unfortunately, he’s lying about some very important things. And this is the problem with this play. It’s actually really hard to tell what he’s lying about and what exactly drives the events of the climax. They come upon the viewer suddenly and with insufficient exposition.

I feel like this play could have benefited from being edited down to an hour from an hour and a half. For example, a good 5 minutes or so right at the beginning is spent with the eponymous main character ranting about the fact he is Monsieur Lazhar who is substituting for Madame LaChance. He says this over and over again, at one point falling on the floor and doing a Homer Simpson style floorspin. The play is full of these zany little performance pieces that just don’t work for me at all.

I see a lot of potential in this play, but can’t quite figure out how to make it work out in my mind.

I don’t know how to express its awesome side better than just listing those things. At many points, this play is just purely fun.

It has a dark side, though. You have to wonder at points why these characters even know each other, let alone why they would invite each other over to watch Labyrinth (or why any of them would be the type to want to watch Labyrinth in the first place). You get the impression it’s supposed to say something about the main two characters and the repressed homoerotic bond they seem to share, but it never really gets fleshed out.

Mostly, though, this play is a fun romp. It starts really slow, but picks up well enough after a few minutes. It’ll make you laugh.