Stage Door News
Stage Door News
Jem Rolls cartoons the personal and the universal in his own intercontinental epic of blundering idiocy.
“Hold still Jem, I'm going in.”
I, IDIOT
you know they say everyone has a novel in them
well you know what its called, that novel everyone has in them?
it's called
I, IDIOT
so a large flapping jaw with an Englishman stuck on the end proclaims
I, IDIOT
and a suspiciously self-deprecating individual boasts
a whole new genre of performance
yes a whole new genre
VERBAL BOUFFON
for it's a lyrical cartoonery
when, with verbal and bodily buffoonery,
Jem Rolls explores the comic universality
in his own ungrand epic of ungrand
stupidity
I, IDIOT
after a ragingly successful self-reinvention as storyteller
in his last show THE INVENTOR OF ALL THINGS,
itself a bigsized risk... [the kind of comedy which ends in Hiroshima, anyone?]
Jem could perhaps have ploughed a similar and now safer furrow
instead he continues dangling himself over the edge of risk
on a slender branch of poetically adulterated silliness
above a bottomless lake of ever possible Fringe failure
for, unfortunately, he been infected by the clown virus
has learnt more from the clowns than anyone else
Jonno Katz, Chris Gibbs, Red Bastard and more
and so is transmogrifying himself again, same but different
into a more physically performative poet than any poet he has ever seen
with poems, song, monologues, bad jokes, good jokes, knock-knock jokes, neologisms, lousy lipsyncing, and an unwise but contractually obligated first foray into interpretive dance
including... an unsightly piece of savage introspection: “HOLD STILL JEM, I'M GOING IN”
a wilful rejection of truth knowledge language and history, “NOTHING IS TRUE BUT SOME THINGS ARE MORE TRUE THAN OTHERS”
and an unidiotic slice, “THE MAN SO ACUTELY VULNERABLE HE BRINGS THE VULTURE OUT IN EVERYONE”
Plus Jem explains, with ringing plausibility, what caused the Big Bang. And every Big Bang there has ever been. And will ever be.
Jem Rolls: I, I D I O T
RED SANDCASTLE THEATRE.
922 Queen St., East. 416 845 9411 . Tickets $20.
Photo: Jem Rolls.
2018-05-20
Toronto: Jem Rolls presents "Jem Rolls: I, Idiot" from June 27 to July 1