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.