Reviews 2018
Reviews 2018
✭✭✭✭✩
written and directed by Tom McGee
Theatre Brouhaha, Toronto Fringe Festival, The Paddock Tavern, 178 Bathurst St., Toronto
July 4-15, 2018
Tom McGee’s site-specific play Featherweight begins as a hilarious satirical comedy about the afterlife but slowly morphs into a serious, incisive critique of the power of anyone – even a god – to judge the worth of a human life.
Jeff (Michael Musi) has been killed in an accident. Not realizing he’s dead, he finds that his favourite hangout, the Paddock Tavern, has become his place of eternal judgement. It turns out that regardless of a person’s religious beliefs, the afterlife is governed as it was in ancient Egypt. The male jackal-headed god Anubis (Amanda Cordner), here taking the form of Jeff’s ex-girlfriend, weighs the heart of the deceased against a feather. If the deceased’s conscience is clear, the scales will balance and his soul will live forever. If the deceased’s conscience is not, the heart will outweigh the feather and the monster Ammit will devour his soul.
McGee’s decision to have Anubis also weigh a flash drive of Jeff’s browser history is a twist that takes the play off-subject.
Hugely impressive are the scenes where Anubis’s butler Thoth (Kat Letwin, expert as both serious and comic characters) channels the various souls of people with whom Jeff must make peace before he is judged.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review appeared in NOW Magazine on July 5, 2018.
Photo: Kat Letwin as Thoth, Michael Musi as Jeff and Amanda Cordner as Anubis. ©2018 John Gundy.
For tickets, visit https://fringetoronto.com.
2018-07-05
Featherweight