✭✭✭✩✩

by Tim Motley

Tim Motley, Toronto Fringe Festival, Factory Theatre Mainspace, Toronto

July 3-11, 2015

Dirk Darrow: “Your groans just make me stronger!”

Tim Motley, an American expat now living in Melbourne, Australia, has created created a unique hybrid of a show in 2 Ruby Knockers, 1 Jaded Dick.  It combines stand-up comedy and story-telling with magic tricks and mind-reading to tell a film noiresque tale about a bank heist in 1930s Philadelphia.  This is the second of Motley’s Dirk Darrow mysteries and both have been major hits in Australia.  Here at the opening performance the audience seemed puzzled how to respond to this unusual mix, and Motley himself seemed puzzled how to respond to the audience. 

It’s common for comedians to ad lib commentary about jokes that fall flat, but Motley had to comment so often that rather than encouraging laughter, the commentary seemed to make the audience self-conscious.  Luckily, about halfway through the performance after a brilliant feat of magic involving story-telling and a deck of cards, Motley and the audience finally seemed to cotton on to each other’s ways, but it was a rocky road up to that point.  I suspect things will become smoother over the run when Motley becomes more familiar with Toronto audiences and we with the unusual new form he’s created.

Motley enters in his persona of Dirk Darrow.  He tells us he is a jaded private detective.  How jaded is he?  Well, he launches into a series of one-liners all beginning with “I’m so jaded that I …” and ending in a terrible pun or crude reference as in “… only get an erection at funerals”.  This stand-up portion is long enough we start to wonder if that’s all the show will be.  Luckily, Motley begins the story in a perfect imitation of the tough, dead-pan voice of detectives of film noir or early radio.  Virtually, every sentence of his story involves long, complex comparisons that end in more terrible puns.  At times there are so many puns per minute it’s hard to take them all in. 

The story itself is pretty negligible and concerns a tip-off about a bank heist, the heist itself and Darrow’s attempt to find the mastermind behind it.  Keeping the story straight in the audience’s mind is not really the main point of the show, because Motley’s narrative is continually interrupted by magic acts.  Thus, a visit to the bank leads to the sudden transformation of a bill into confetti.  A call for a line-up of suspects leads to a rather hit-and-miss mind-reading act. 

One difficulty is the change from narrative to magic act involves a shift from Darrow in a spotlight on the darkened stage to house lights up on the audience.  The shifts back and forth are hard on the eyes.  Motley also uses a microphone, completely unnecessary in such a small venue as the Factory Theatre.  This separates his character from the audience and, in audience participation, makes him audible but not the participants.  Ditching the mic would be the first step in creating an improved rapport with the audience.

In his press release Motley says that his Dirk Darrow mysteries are “the first theatrical productions in the last century to involve magic to tell a story that's about anything other than magic”.  Previous plays seen in Toronto that included magic have been Mr. and Mrs. Alexander: Sideshows & Psychics from New Zealand and Bullet Catch from the UK, both in 2014, but indeed both shows had magic and magicians as their subject.  Part of the difficulty with 2 Ruby Knockers is that the audience has to find its ground after an intro of stand-up followed by narration interspersed with magic.  Unlike the two shows just mentioned, the magic is only tangentially related to the story and does not move it forward.  We constantly have to switch between a mode of non-participation in the narrative section to participation in the magic sections.

Two of Motley’s magic tricks are especially good.  The first, a card trick I’ve never seen done before, perfectly melds the ideas of magic and narrative better than anything else in the show.  Motley repeated shuffles a deck of cards and then proceeds to recap the story.  Without looking he goes through the deck showing the face of card after card, each of which illustrates a particular, word, number or colour as he mentions it.  It’s the highpoint of the show and deservedly won the most extended applause.  The second trick, which I don’t wish to describe, restores the previously destroyed paper bill in spectacular fashion.

By the show’s finale, it was clear that the audience had warmed to Motley and his character as Motley had finally sussed out the nature of the audience.  In Australia, audiences got to know Dirk Darrow through Motley’s earlier show, that familiarity helping 2 Ruby Knockers to become an even bigger hit.  It’s possible that the earlier show would have been a better introduction to Canadians of Motley’s daring hybrid of comedy, magic and narrative.  Experiments like this are what fringe festivals are all about, so if you’re curious, you should give it a try.  

                     

Just a note to Motley: “Root” does not have a slang meaning in Canada as it does in Australia.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive. 

Photo: Tim Motley as Dirk Darrow. ©2014 James Penlidis.

For tickets, visit http://fringetoronto.com.