Toronto Fringe Review: The Depth of the Ocean

Last Friday night the Indyish crew celebrated our arrival in Toronto with a bunch of beers at the Tranzac (served up by the lovely Cassandra of Calamity Royale). Fringe flyers were flying (as they are wont to do) and the one that managed to come to focus despite my increasingly blurry vision was for a play called The Depth of the Ocean. “Full immersion Fringe Baptism!” it promised, “performed entirely in Benson pool!” Whoa, slurred my inner voice, cooool.

By the time I arrived at U of T’s Benson Pool on Sunday evening, I was in a more jaded frame of mind, wondering whether cool venues were just a cheap gimmick to hook those of us who pick our plays through beer goggles. Fortunately, this show did not disappoint. The plot boasted a couple of intriguing twists that – if not exactly unpredictable – kept the story afloat. The characters were simple but likeable and I was on the edge of my seat each time one of them went overboard, which happened pretty frequently as the five survivors discovered their unimaginable differences and ultimately came to terms with their fate.

There is something very primal about seeing the hump of a human body break the surface of the water, or hearing last words choked out by a wave, that would be hard to emulate on a dry stage and I can see why the play-in-a-pool is an appealing theatrical experiment.

Then again, some of the most impressive productions I have seen create a sense of place from scratch. The jungle woven from bamboo reeds and human voices in Yabu No Naka: Distruthed comes to mind (I caught their awesome show last month in Montreal and reviewed it here).

If done properly, a cool venue can dazzle the audience, but that also makes it harder for the performers to shine through. I did enjoy The Depth of the Ocean, but I came away the impression that this production was mostly riding the momentum of an innitial spark that went something like: “Hey, lets do a play in a swimming pool.”

Swig. “Coooool.”
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The Perpetual Motion Theatre folks, from Minnesota, have a photo blog and videos documenting the “making of” this play over at www.perpetualmotiontheatre.org