Reviews 2007
Reviews 2007
✭✭✭✭✭
by Daniel MacIvor, directed by Daniel Brooks
da da kamera, Buddies in Bad Times Theatre, Toronto
January 9-February 4, 2007
Monster is the second in Buddies in Bad Times’s retrospective of three of Daniel MacIvor’s one-man works. The 1998 play is brilliant, outrageous and disturbing and MacIvor a thrilling performer. If you have never seen MacIvor in one of these plays, the time to do so now since MacIvor plans to retire these works permanently from performance.
Monster begins with an extended period of total darkness. This is appropriate for a play that explores both the theatre and the darkest side of human nature. Early on we learn in gruesome detail of a son’s horrific murder of his father. Suddenly we shift to the comic, seemingly unrelated tale of Janine and her ex-alcoholic boyfriend Joe and how they come to be married. One link between the stories is Joe’s nightmare that replicates every detail of the son’s crime and later becomes a horror movie. We fear to learn more.
Why are we fascinated with people’s most appalling deeds? Are there limits on the subjects art can exploit? Who is responsible when reality imitates art? Monster explores all these questions as it looks into the savagery that lies within us. As MacIvor morphs into more than a dozen distinct characters, the precise synchronization of his gestures with Richard Feren’s chilling soundscape and Andy Moro’s fantastic lighting is simply amazing.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2007-01-18.
Photo: Daniel MacIvor in Monster.
2007-01-18
Monster