Toronto Fringe Review: Legoland

A bitchin, biting play about 2 kids raised in a co-op farm in Western Canada - all naked hippies and humanism at a young age and talent shows where everyone wins. Legoland, a play by award winning culty-following young crew, Atomic Vaudeville, is what this co-op, grow-op calls the rest of the world. And Legoland is what the precocious kids want to see, though they’re not allowed out ’till 18. Their sneaky smarts inadvertently destroy the world where they’d been happy without knowing it, and the story spirals from there into further kid-logical adventures and tragedy. And it’s hysterically funny.

Highlights for me are the younger brother in his cape and sudden spotlight, spouting Nietzsche or creepy empathy with a Jeffery Dahmer puppet. Also, the 16 year old sister, the primary narrator, walks that dangerous line with the naivety and earnestness of a kid and manages to nail it firmly on the side of successful: she pulls off looking like she really is almost always unaware of how SERIOUSLY funny her perceptions of the stale/real world are. The satire is layered, multi-lingual, referential and sharp but the character she plays remains uncontrived and bleeding teenage raw. The sketch comedy duo both manage to avoid the feeling of jazzhand depth, or plot as afterthought and instead channel the best of sketch comedy - the emotion and energy range it develops in a performer, the creative hysteria with props and puppets and editorial asides- to offer a really great, whole, smart, sharp satisfying play.

Check it out at Passe Muraille during the Toronto Fringe, which runs till July 15. Which is my birthday. huh.