goestoshow

The first line of No Choking Matter asks: “What does the heimlich maneuver mean to me?” Apparently, to the characters in this play, it means very little. Even so, they are attempting to make a video about it to enter into a contest.

This play had a lot of really funny jokes. Jokes that had me and the rest of the audience laughing a lot. But somehow, outside the jokes, it kind of felt a bit long at 70 minutes. The romantic plots didn’t move along quite as well as they could have, and none of the characters felt very likeable. The show has a lot of potential, it just didn’t come together as well as it could have.

As a positive to highlight, though, I really enjoyed Stephanie Wigston‘s mousey performance of Annette. The understated nervousness really contrasted well with the more brash personalities of the other characters, but wasn’t drowned out anyways. And there was always something going on in the background while characters talked, which I always appreciate.

If you’re in the mood for just a silly play that will make you laugh a bunch, you might enjoy it more than I did.

[Once again, to get it out of the way, I got a comped into this play.]

All I really knew about this play going in was that Morgan Smith (previously reviewed here for her work Electra in the 2009 New Works festival) co-wrote and performed in it, and that it involved somehow a school mascot named Wally the Woodchuck who’s been saying creepy things on twitter all week.

So I expected anger, and I expected creepy, and I got both in spades. Mixed in there was a really nice story about teenagers dealing (mostly badly, but eventually somewhat successfully) with the ways they’re Different from their peers. In fact, the only character who actually comes across as relatively normal is the main protagonist, Wallace (David Johnston), who took on being the mascot at least partly because everyone was always calling him Wally the Woodchuck anyways.

His erstwhile girlfriend, Lydia (Elena Porter), seems more interested in his costume than in him. His best friend, Gina (Morgan Smith), is angry and bitter at everything in her life and seems in turns a bit interested in every single other character in the play. His and Gina’s tormentor, Vince (Brian Bergum), is deeply unhappy with his life as a popular football player because he wants to be good at other things but people keep insisting it’s the only thing he can do (something I can empathize with).

For the first half of the play, Morgan completely steals the show every time she’s on stage. Her personality is a whirlwind that completely overwhelms everyone else. But by the second half, as the other characters start revealing their quirks, it becomes more of an ensemble work and it really comes together. Some of the quirkier personality traits are played mostly for laughs in an as-if kind of way earlier in the play, and you could just hear the jaws drop in the house as they eventually proved to mostly be real things.

I definitely recommend seeing this play. It’s really really fun. If only for the hilarious choreographed fight scene between Wallace and Wally the Woodchuck in the middle of the play.

I just hope no one gets heat stroke from wearing that costume when King Edward School gets sweltering hot for the later shows when the weather gets better.