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written and directed by Kat Sandler

Theatre Brouhaha, Toronto Fringe Festival, George Ignatieff Theatre, Toronto

July 4-13, 2014

Kat Sandler latest play borrows its set-up – schmuck kidnaps star comedian – from Martin Scorsese’s 1982 film The King of Comedy, but she turns it into an urban fairy tale where the schmuck wants to learn to coax a laugh from the “saddest girl in the world” with whom he has fallen in love at first sight.

Colin Munch plays the comedian Pat as a man so bursting with anger after his divorce that his career as a comic has nosedived.  Now he “punches up” other people’s material to make it funnier or simply more effective.  Tim Walker is hilarious as the schmuck Duncan, who is Pat’s greatest fan but, rather too paradoxically has no sense of humour himself.  Caitlin Driscoll’s soulful performance helps to make Brenda’s succession of bizarre tragedies more believable.      

By pushing her characters to extremes that are no longer understandable in any realistic fashion, Sandler broaches such important theatrical topics as the very nature of humour and the relation of comedy to tragedy.  Unfortunately, she is too busy generating zingers to explore them.  Yet, we hardly notice this lack given the play’s breakneck pacing and the turbocharged performances of the entire cast.

              

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in NOW Magazine 2014-07-10.

Photo: Tim Walker and Colin Munch.  ©2014 Zaiden.

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