Wednesday, March 16, 2011

More Fine Girls - Tarragon Theatre

Manic. If you had to describe this show in one word it would be manic. It's like the writers drank 30 cups of coffee, then wrote a play. It's like the actors drank 30 cups of coffee before performing. Fast talking, quick movements, manic.
The play centres around three sisters and their varying struggles with sanity. I'm not sure if the play was supposed to be a comedy, there was a lot of jokes and a good one every ten minutes or so but the plot seemed too absurdist for a comedy.
The play goes from one sister who talks to aliens and attaches her furniture to the ceiling, to another constantly bemoaning her fate, to the third, Anne-Marie MacDonald portraying Aunt Jackie from the tv show Roseanne down to the hand wringing and oversize gestures.
The problem is nothing is believable. The story is not believable and goes no where and the characters have no arc, when the story ends everyone is in the same emotional state as when they begin. Along the way we're treated to an insane person's rantings; of hidden cameras, alien abductions, far out diseases. None of it makes any sense. And the payoff, the end of they play, is a narrator saying "a year later, everything got better".  The end.
Skip this, along with the rest of this season's Tarragon offerings. Last season they had original musicals, stories from remote parts of Canada, and contemporary dramas. This year every play seems to be the result of five people locked in a room for two hours.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

"And the payoff, the end of they play, is a narrator saying 'a year later, everything got better'."

Spoiler alert!