✭✭✭✭✭

by Allan Girod, directed by Igor Sas

flaming locomotive productions, Toronto Fringe Festival, Tarragon Theatre Extra Space, Toronto

July 7-16, 2011;

Hamilton Fringe Festival, Theatre Aquarius Studio,

July 18-24, 2011

Mark When Harry Met Harry as one of your must-sees at this year’s Fringe Festival.  The solo show by Allan Girod from Perth, Australia, is a perfect blending of structure and meaning.  It’s a play with audience participation that is actually about audience participation.

Girod first introduces us to Harry, a man whose highest values are order and routine and as a result is absolutely inflexible in dealing with other people and enraged by anything that might upset his schedule.  He chews out Bradley (an audience member chosen by Girod) for not using the form he has devised efficiently.  To his horror he finds that his boss Mr. Herbert demands that he attend a “personal development workshop” during his lunch break.  Harry is so terrified by the prospect, he’d rather throw himself in front of a car than attend.

Girod then morphs into the unctuous, self-congratulatory Rodney, who leads us (as the seminary attendees) in a series of exercises to increase our interpersonal skills.  Rodney’s mantra, “Confront--good; avoid--bad”, is clearly just the opposite of Harry’s.  Repeatedly Harry and a second volunteer (from the audience) have to perform Rodney’s icebreaking techniques on stage.

What makes the show so unusual is how it plays with our role as audience.  When Girod is Harry, stiff and non-interactive, we can laugh at his obsessiveness and limitations.  When, however, Girod is Rodney, touchy-feely and unpredictably interactive, we become as afraid of being chosen as a “volunteer” as Harry does.  Girod makes us laugh at the same character first for being unlike us and then for being very much like us. 

Girod is marvellous at physical comedy.  He can wrap is 6’9” frame into a ball when Harry rolls up in fear like an armadillo.  He moves rigidly along square lines as Harry and flows across the stage like a ballet dancer as Rodney.  His timing is perfect and his ability to improvise (necessary given the vagaries of the audience members) is as much fun as the script.  The next time you find yourself in an audience praying “Don’t choose me” as the performer on stage scans the room for a volunteer, you’ll have to ask yourself--as this play forces you to--what is the Harry in you trying to avoid.             

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Allan Girod. ©2010 Lisa Businovski

For Tickets, visit www.fringetoronto.com or www.hamiltonfringe.ca.