Reviews 2016
Reviews 2016
✭✭✭✩✩
by Adam Bailey, directed by Matt White
Still Your Friend, St. Vladimir Theatre, Toronto Fringe Festival, Toronto
June 29-July 9, 2016
Adam Bailey’s solo comedy is a coming-out story with a twist. Bailey’s father’s was an evangelical Christian preacher. With much ebullient humour Bailey’s tells of his first inklings of gay desire, his belated loss of virginity and his failed first relationships. Prefaced with all of Bailey’s father’s talk of homosexuality as a sin and hellfire as punishment, the story’s conclusion, we assume, will be Bailey’s long-delayed coming out to his father and his father’s reaction, but, surprisingly, Bailey leaves this out.
Instead, Bailey shifts the focus away from himself to the more general idea of the theatre itself as a kind of secular church where people gather to hear stories. It’s a lovely idea but no substitute for finishing a story with such a strong beginning.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review was published in NOW magazine June 30, 2016.
Photo: Adam Bailey. ©2015 Still Your Friend.
For tickets, visit http://fringetoronto.com/fringe-festival/shows.
2016-06-30
Adam Bailey is on Fire