✭✭✭✩✩

written and directed by Jeff Leard

Active Salad Productions, Toronto Fringe Festival,

Annex Theatre, Toronto

July 6-17, 2011

Jeff Leard’s solo comic sketch is Woody Allen’s sex-as-space-launch scene from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (1972) mixed with imagery from Star Wars and Star Trek.  Where Allen’s view remained male-centred, Leard takes us inside Ovaria, where a high priestess is preparing one of her sister eggs for monthly sacrifice. Leard is adept at keeping his 20 or more characters distinct, often using acrobatic moves to change from one to another. After all of Leard’s frenzied scene-shifting between male and female genitalia, the ending seems disappointingly artificial.  Leard is certainly talented enough to take on the challenge of depicting fertilization and cell-division.                    

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in NOW Magazine, July 14, 2011.

Photo: Jeff Leard. ©2010 Victoria Fringe Festival.

For tickets, visit www.fringetoronto.com.