Reviews 2011
Reviews 2011
✭✭✭✭✩
by James Gangl, directed by Chris Gibbs
Gangland Productions, Theatre Passe Muraille Mainspace, Toronto
October 6-22, 2011
“Priapus versus Saint Lucy”
Autobiographical solo shows are a dime a dozen at fringe festivals. So how did James Gangl’s Sex, Religion & Other Hang-ups win Patron’s Pick at this year’s Toronto Fringe Festival play and NOW Magazine’s awards for Outstanding Performance and Outstanding Production? The answer is that Gangl and his play are so funny, endearing and truthful all at once.
Gangl’s premise is that since he is looking for a girlfriend he wants all potential candidates to know via this show what he is really like. He’s been told he has an “ordinary guy walk” and a “weathered look”. And he is an ordinary guy since he has a strong sexual drive. On the other hand, he also has had a strong Catholic upbringing. He went to mass every day, went to confessional even with nothing to confess, turned people’s use of profanity into blessings and knows all the saints and their attributes, including Saint Lucy, who tore out her own eyes rather than lose her virginity.
In 2005 when he was 26, Gangl had two main desires--to be a “real” card-carrying actor and to lose his virginity to the right girl. The stories of both desires are intimately connected. His first paying job as an actor is as Guy #1 in a 30-second Coor’s Light commercial about four friends snowboarding down a double diamond slope at Mont Tremblant. The guys later meet up with three snowbunnies in a bar. It transpires that Gangl falls hard for his ideal, Bunny #3, an underwear model with a masters in sociology. (Who knew what intrigues lay behind such fast-forwardable TV froth?) The tale of their on-off relationship and how Gangl’s religious scruples repeatedly sabotage his physical desires is truly hilarious.
Gangl’s delivery is so completely natural that you feel as if he is just blurting out his story spontaneously. His great ad libs, direct address to audience members and commentary on his own story reinforce that impression. Yet, the piece is so tightly structured, with various points underscored with lighting cues and other effects, that Gangl’s apparent rambling is really an art that hides art. It’s no surprise that the show is directed by Chris Gibbs since Gibbs’s shows have a similar quality, though the two are different. While Gibbs improvises on a clearly set text, Gangl’s periodic reminders that the show is planned, like the useful paintbrush in his back pocket to remove debris, shock us into realizing that he actually has a set text. In Gangl as in Gibbs, the tension between what seems spontaneous and what is not lifts the genre of the solo show above the ordinary into the metatheatrical dimension. With Gangl this works perfectly since too much self-consciousness is precisely his theme.
Gangl himself is an immediately likable, sympathetic performer. His confession of such intimate personal details with such self-deprecating humour instantly puts us on his side and gives his mantra “I will not be vulnerable again” several layers of irony. Even if the depths of Roman Catholicism are foreign to you, anyone can relate to situations where the reins of self-consciousness have restrained natural impulses to everlasting regret. It’s a show filled with laughter from start to finish and is sure to have a long life beyond this remount. Let’s hope Gangl likes touring because there are lots of people out there--maybe even that ideal girlfriend--who are going to like Gangl.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: James Gangl. ©2011 Kevin Thom.
For tickets, visit http://sexhangup.com.
2011-10-06
Sex, Religion & Other Hang-ups