<b>✭✭</b>✩✩✩
<b>by Heather Allin, directed by Dennis Hayes
It’s Just A Stage We’re Going Through, Toronto Fringe Festival, Robert Gill Theatre, Toronto
July 3-13, 2013
</b>
In her ambitious solo show, writer/performer Heather Allin aims to uncover the source and power of human creativity. Allin plays Morgan, a performance artist, who treks into the forest and tries various New Age rituals to rekindle her creativity – but in vain. Soon Morgan is confronted both by the Celtic goddess Morgaine (otherwise known as Morgan Le Fay), who comes to steal her creative powers, and by the spirit of a dying deer that spouts reassuring Taoist and Buddhist aphorisms.
The play tries to be both an internal psychodrama and a cosmic battle of ideologies, but succeeds as neither. The result is a mishmash of gothic fantasy and philosophical clichés from East and West. Allin is adept at mime and dance and the best sequence is a wordless, brilliantly enacted sword-and-knife battle between Morgaine and Morgan that suggests that movement rather than words might be the better medium for this subject matter.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in <i>NOW Magazine</i> 2013-07-11.
Photo: Heather Allin. ©2013 Grace Paulionis and Lars Keffer.
For tickets, visit <a href="http://fringetoronto.com">http://fringetoronto.com</a>.
<b>2013-07-11</b>
<b>Just Lift Your Feet</b>