Four and a Half Stars
At midnight on Saturday, my brain wasn’t exactly fresh any more and I had no idea what I was gonna see. With two chairs on the stage and the place feeling more like a sweatlodge than a venue, I wasn’t expecting much – from myself or the performance. Then it started, with a party scene where the pair of actors (Tallulah Winkelman and Michael Rinaldi) meet reading fridge magnet poetry. As they start reading and talking and back to the poetry and being obscure and revealing themselves and telling each other personal stories and the poetry again and this amazing rhythm kicks in and the seduction between them builds and… I’m wondering “what the hell is going on? This is so… smart… and it feels so… right… this is so… good…” The 70 minutes are gone too fast. The feeling of déjà vu mixed with the fantastic language exchange that takes place expresses so accurately something so evanescent. A mood, a generational feeling of being 33 and raised on sitcoms and comics and movies and living in a city and eating 99 cent pizza, looking for love, going to parties, hanging out, fantasizing, writing emails, watching TV, talking about food… a definite texture of urban social/ relational life. It’s so self-concious and pretentious a process. But so what? The portait is stunningly beautiful and playful and accurate and crazy. Portraits are in themselves self-reflexive and there’s nothing wrong with that. Some people might not immediately relate to it, but they’ll get the music of it all. Yes, there are a lot of generational inside jokes, references – I was lost at times too – but still this recognition and this beautiful language that has to be heard and seen. Who can resist a good love story? Simple, complex, complicated, twisted: I’m sure you know what I mean.
Isabelle Roussean
SEE Magazine - Edmonton
