Reviews 2004
Reviews 2004
✭✭✭✩✩
by Brad Fraser, directed by Jim Millan
Crow’s Theatre, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto
April 29-May 16, 2004
Nudity, violence, simulated sex, gay and straight--all these helped make Brad Fraser’s Unidentified Human Remains a succès de scandal in its production by Crow’s Theatre in 1990. Now the company with the same director and designer have revived the show, but the times have caught up with it. What might have shocked in 1990 pales with the likes Oz or Queer as Folk on television.
In this comedy/thriller we meet seven twentysomethings in Edmonton searching for love while serial killer stalks the city. Gay waiter David (Damien Atkins) rooms with neurotic straight book reviewer Candy (Mary Krohnert). Their scenes together are written, directed and played exactly like a sitcom, with the gay wit always getting the last word. For the serial killer plot director Jim Millan heavy-handedly underscores the action with cheesy “scary” music that unnecessarily reveals the killer’s identity early on. The best scenes are those between gay characters and possible partners who think they’re straight where tension and humour mingle in a manner free of generic artifice.
Fraser’s interest in his characters is only skin deep, so the actors have to work to find more. Atkins is excellent at showing the fragility of David’s cynical façade. Philip Riccio wonderfully brings out the confusion in the “straight” teenager who idolizes him. Krohnert’s Candy stays on the surface, but Jenny Young as the lesbian in love with her is a delight. Brendan Wall simmers as David’s troubled friend Bernie, but Tony Nappo is bland as Candy’s love interest and Michelle Latimer as a psychic prostitute is never believable.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2004-09-30.
Photo: Jenny Young, Mary Kronhert and and Damien Atkins. ©2004.
2004-04-06
Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love