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written by Daniel MacIvor, directed by Daniel Brooks

Necessary Angel, Berkeley Street Theatre, Toronto

April 15-May 8, 2010

Two years ago Daniel MacIvor dissolved his theatre company da da kamera and publicly swore off appearing in any further one-man shows.  He now appears in his new one-man show fittingly titled This Is What Happens Next.  Explaining this change of mind and reflecting on humankind’s need to tell stories and his own particular need to do so provide the primary impetus for the show.  Yet, even avid fans of MacIvor and his dramaturg and director Daniel Brooks will find this new show far too self-conscious and the story far too deconstructed to be enjoyable.

The show gets off to a bad start when MacIvor enters through the audience, Starbuck’s cup in hand, explaining that’s he’s late because he was slowed down at the coffee shop.  As he points out later, the fact he already had a mic on renders this supposedly spontaneous entrance patently false.  Thus begin a series of explanations about explanations about explanations.  They are meant to reveal the theatre as a mirror reflecting another mirror, but they weigh the show down.  Brooks used the same approach of of ultra-self-consciousness in Rick Miller’s HARDSELL last year to the same deadening effect.  You've done it before and we’ve seen it before, so let’s move on.              

MacIvor, playing himself, tells us that he gave up his one-man shows because he wanted to live more in the moment.  He wanted to change, to be a better person, to believe in happy endings despite all the evidence to the contrary.  Therefore, to contrast with his earlier lugubrious oeuvre, MacIvor deliberately sets out to tell us a story with a happy ending.  This involves a gay man Warren, who has divorced his husband of two years and wants his stuff back, and includes Warren’s female lawyer, Warren’s transsexual astrologer, the alcoholic father of the astrologer’s nephew, the seven-year-old nephew himself and a giant (a manifestation of Schopenhauer’s Will) who appears in the nephew’s story.  As one might expect, MacIvor is a marvel at transforming himself from one character to the next.  Unlike previous shows, however, MacIvor as himself, comments on each of the characters and their later fates.  They are ultimately all simply different aspects of himself.  The story concludes with three endings--the first is the nephew’s fantasy, the second is typical of MacIvor’s past shows and the third meant to represent his new positive attitude.  By this time we don’t care.  The show seems like a sub-par MacIvor tale presented in deconstructionist mode to make it appear more significant.  This lends the show an unpleasant archness of style and gives it the effect of an expertly performed but empty exercise.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly, 2010-04-16.

Photo: Daniel MacIvor. ©Guntar Kravis..