Save the Princess is a choose your own adventure style play, where the audience have agency over the choices of the lead character, Princess Plum, through a clever app that works similarly to online quizzes or polls. The choices of the audience then dictate which world the actors will find themselves in. The actors are adept at jumping into the surprise scenes, and the composition of the piece is clever. The performances, direction, and overall production, however, fail to sizzle. They are passable, but nothing remarkable — it could have been shorter, less shouty, and tighter in terms of timing and pace to properly evoke the urgency that video games create. There was an interesting point of view on the absence of female voices in the video game universes, and the inherent misogyny in these spaces which was smart; I would have like to see the play twist the knife on this just a little more and lean in, rather than entertaining us with just a sprinkle of provocative thought.
improv
Hold On To Your Butts @ Arcola Theatre
Positioned as a low-budget live action re-enactment of Jurassic Park….in a theatre….Hold On To Your Butts is a semi-improvised theatrical presentation of the story of the film (sort of), with silly character traits emphasised, and cardboard cut out kid’s basement style interpretations of costumes to create the heightened moments of the story.
It had moments of humour, but for me just wasn’t sufficiently a parody, or sufficiently campy to elicit more than a chuckle, leaving me to question what the point was. Granted, the audience seemed to enjoy the point of view more than I, so perhaps I am just not quite the right audience for this. It wasn’t bad, it just for me wasn’t particularly new or interesting.
End Meeting For All - Forced Entertainment
I watched this in recording. You can watch Part 1 here. You can watch Part 2 here. Both are available until June, and Part 3 airs May 12.
Disjointed. Unfocused. Overwhelming.
Forced Entertainment’s End Meeting For All series are improvised public group calls between company members isolated in their homes. Each begins abruptly, and ends abruptly, yet despite the improvisational nature, a structure appears. People ignore others in the call. People get distracted and wander away. People remain deeply focused on a single object or question to the point of irritation. Technology fails (or does it?).
This reflection of our time, when interaction with our closest friends, colleagues, and family members is largely through the blue-white glare of a computer monitor, is stunning. Forced create a piece of performance that is at once anti-performance, and high-performance. We are all living in this recognizable yet utterly foreign version of our world. It is funny, it is sad, it is at times bleak.
This is theatre for isolated times.
Photo by Charlie Winter
Improvised Therapy @ Toronto Fringe
London-based improv company Barry Brian Bean are talented and attentive improvisers. Their sketch show is bawdy and silly and a touch absurd, which is really quite enjoyable. I’ll be honest, I was over-tired and likely not the most receptive audience member to the pull-an-audience member on stage sort of improv, but the crowd did seem to enjoy it, and I suspect a less tired me would have been more there for it. Again, these 3 are talented and engaging improvisers.
The best sketch, for me, was the recurring “Board Meeting” which was increasingly ridiculous, until the trio resembled the slimy jean-store boss from Human Traffic (bonus points if you get that reference…) and showed us their “bird feeders”.
A great and silly time if you’re up for that.