Toronto Fringe Review - The Movies: Abridged

These days (as opposed to, say, the days of ancient Greece), anyone creating theatre has to deal with an inescapable truth: a lot of people just don’t care about live performance. Or at least, they’re not familiar with it. People tend to like the things they’re familiar with, and in the case of modern storytelling, the theatre has been all but ousted by that institution of familiarity, the movies. So what’s an enterprising theatre company to do if they’re interested in reaching the broadest possible audience? More importantly, what’s an enterprising theatre company to do if they’re interested in reaching the broadest possible audience AND they have absolutely no ideas of their own? How about… a play… that’s about… the movies?

The Movies: Abridged is a cheap and lazy excursion into the worn-out territory of film clichés. The “plot” — a new employee of Bigbuster Video watches a training tape — is the flimsiest of excuses needed to trot out an hour’s worth of uninspired spoofs and lame celebrity-mocking. All the “comedic moments” are presented as if they’re fresh and clever ideas, no matter how painfully dated the references or how stale the jokes.

Hey, it’s that scene from When Harry Met Sally where she fakes an orgasm in the restaurant — but it turns out that there’s actually a guy under the table pleasuring her! Pure gold! What’s this — making fun of Sylvester Stallone’s acting abilities? Oh no they didn’t! Can you believe it — they just quoted a line from The Matrix! This shit is blowing my mind! Throw in repeated references to Lindsay Lohan in rehab (burn!), some insightful commentary about how men like action flicks and women like romantic comedies (zing!) and a wonderful running gag about used condoms in the DVD drop box (wham!), and you’ve got yourself a piece of “theatre” that just about rivals the Air Bud franchise in terms of sheer creative audacity. That’s not even mentioning the wildly disingenuous ending that gives a half-hearted shout-out to independent films, despite having built an entire show on the familiarity of formulaic Hollywood drivel.

The Movies: Abridged could easily come across like a bunch of friends who got drunk at a party and let their cliché-regurgitation go on far too long — except that there’s an air of calculation about the whole thing, and a distinct lack of fun or discovery in the actors’ performances. They’re just pushing the buttons that they know will get a reaction. And the thing is — they do get that reaction. Surprisingly (or rather, not surprisingly at all), this show has been playing to packed houses, and at least some part of the audience is just eating it up, every time.

People tend to like the things they’re familiar with. They like to laugh at the things they recognize. So what could possibly be funnier than a play full of lines that you’ve heard before?

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