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by T. Berto, directed by Andrea Wasserman,

Pencil-Neck Theatre, Toronto Fringe Festival, Factory Theatre Mainspace, Toronto

July 2-13, 2008

T. Berto’s latest play is a well-cast, very well-performed series of intense interlocking monologues.  For the first two-thirds Berto lets us discover what relations five men on stage have had as he explores a wide range of gay male attitudes toward sex from egocentric pleasure to control to healing to transformation.  Then in the final third Berto adds a sixth voice, a youth (Cole J. Alvis) whose comically gothic story is so bizarre it fits with none of the preceding tales and throws the focus on conflicting sexual perceptions off balance, as if a second play had somehow roared in and derailed the first.  

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2008-07-10.

Photo: Neil Adams and Graeme Gerrard. ©Bob Curry.