In awe of Dawe
Rating: 5 Suns (out of 5)
In
an overstuffed Fringe world where quick, simple labels are often applied,
the talents of TJ Dawe cannot be quantified.
He's not a comic but he's very funny. He doesn't seem to be acting but he sure knows how to tell a story. His tales seem random and unattached but they cleverly lead to a single climax.
You may fondly remember Tired Clichés, his presentation last year, in which he told a series of unrelated anecdotes that suddenly spliced together to become one riveting tale. He recounted them while climbing on a chair and leaping into empty cardboard boxes. (You had to be there.)
In Labrador, Dawe, looking like some studious undergrad, wanders onstage, carefully locates his mark in the spotlight and launches into his first observation. Something about how people always lie at funerals. If aliens came to Earth and based their view of us on eulogies, they would believe we were a race of unbelievably fantastic beings. OK!
Dawe talks like a squirrel moves - in sudden bursts with a certain stillness between. At times the words spill from him so rapidly that you have to concentrate to keep up.
What follows is a completely unactorish monologue and how he, as an actor, found himself playing Long John Silver in a touring children's theatre production in Labrador. Like a jazz musician riffing on a theme, he leads us through questions like "how do mirrors work?" and "who invented bread?"
We learn bits about his family, working in a factory and the "screeched in" ceremony that introduces mainlanders to Newfoundland's incendiary drink. He even throws in a review of the works of Kurt Vonnegut.
But hang in there. All these seemingly unrelated, but always interesting, observations really are leading somewhere.
Dawe is a very likable young man with a winning manner and the 65 minutes you spend with him in Labrador is all too short.
Colin MacLean
Edmonton Sun
