by Dave Ross
Dramedy serves this piece well. It’s funny, and I laughed, and the audience laughed. It’s an austere production, with the men wearing near-identical costumes, and the set consisting of two chairs and a handful of books. There is nothing to mention about the lighting, nothing to say of a sound design. This is a character piece, driven by the four actors and nothing else.
The story of a family, living together and loathing each other unfolds on the stage. It would be a challenging piece to perform, and I have to give kudos to the cast for managing the dialogue—the first section is entirely alliterative, resulting in a tongue-twister of a script. Rage delivered with a series of P-words is nothing easy to pull off, but the entire cast manages it effortlessly.
Of the shows I’ve seen at the Toronto Fringe so far, this is the one I would recommend. The script and the delivery are consistent, and there is nothing I love more than being continuously amused by a production. Special mention goes to out to the therapist, who spends much of the show performing as a corpse. I won’t say more than that, as I wouldn’t want to spoil the show for those yet to see it, but it can’t be easy to pull off an Irish jig while deceased.
