Jesus in Montana

Fringe is often an exercise in getting weird and outlandish fictional propositions to ring true. Of course, this exercise often fails. This play happily, magically and marvellously succeeds. Jesus in Montana is the successful culmination of an effort to transform an absolutely true and hugely entertaining story into a work of fiction. Presented in the simplest of Amway set-ups, all the audience gets is an intimate setting with just Barry Smith, a comic multimedia slideshow, and the story of how he actually came to believe that Jesus was reborn as a retired chiropractor in Montana.

What I adored about this show was how Smith plunged the audience so effectively into his experience of belief – of compiling everyday signs and coincidences together until one day you’re at the peak of a mountain of occult weirdness, in particular when he walks you through the detailed conspiracy of signs that point to Paul McCartney’s death. Even those who’ve never been religious can still understand how the trap of exegesis and scriptural exploration can so easily lead you astray. Jesus in Montana is truly a beautiful breath of genuine reality in this festival of fictions.

Teaching As You Like It

Keir Cutler

For the past couple of Fringe Festivals, Keir Cutler has been comically unrolling the skein of a single character. During his past three plays, his caricatured incarnation of a nameless actor turned Shakespearean expert has tumbled from his professorship, lost his family, and become a drunk. Cutler’s character finally lands a job as a substitute high-school teacher in Teaching As You Like It.

I loved his dry, meandering, arrogant and hopelessly buffoonish character before – this latest work finds him tweaked in a very pleasant way as Cutler ramps up the sadness and misery, the outright pathos of his declining man. As we sympathize with his problems and the pitiable inevitability of his life, we are simultaneously affronted by the character’s mix of pretensions and rationalizations.

On top of it all is the fine technique with which Cutler lays out the play. The script is simply structured and deftly executed. I left wishing only that Cutler had turned to Shakespeare in the play more often, because when he did, those moments made for some truly inspired writing.

As appeared in the Ottawa XPress – June 21, 2007
http://www.ottawaxpress.ca/stage/stage.aspx?iIDArticle=12380