Reviews of productions based in Toronto – theatre includes traditional definitions of theatre, as well as dance, opera, comedy, performance art, spoken word performances, and more. Productions may be in-person, or remote productions streamed online on the Internet.
It’s difficult to put a categorize what kind of a show Sex, Drugs & the Holy Ghost really is, and it’s making it very difficult to write this review. Put simply, the show is a series of three vignettes where Diane Johnstone portrays three different women, each of whom is at a different point in their life, and have very different views on, well, everything.
I will never for the life of me remember the correct name for this play (because of the Hollywood Movie). That’s probably intentional, but whatever the situation may be, I called it Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Smile, Eternal Friendship of the Spotless Mind and all variations in between before I actually got it right.
The psychiatric ward based comedy is about two patients who are paired together for treatment purposes (one is violent, the other passive) and who both fall for their new nurse after the old ones dies under mysterious circumstances. There is a peppering of things in between to allow us to learn about the backgrounds of these two individuals.
Heat does not for comedy make. This is the lesson I learned as I caught the sweltering Barfly on the Wall. It’s not that the show is flawless – far from it. I’ll get to that.
But c’mon, how in the hell can anyone be funny as they nearly slip on their own sweat and even more importantly, how can an audience find anything funny as they….well…slip on their own sweat?
