Toronto Fringe review: TIME TO PUT MY SOCKS ON

(Alright, I wrote and promptly forgot to post this during the Fringe. Sorry Alan. Better late then never?)

Alan Shain is an Ottawa-based writer and performer who has worked over the years in theatre, storytelling, stand-up, dance and improv. He holds an undergraduate degree in Political Science and Sociology, and a Master’s in Social Work. He is down-to-earth, disarmingly candid and damn funny. He also has cerebral palsy.

Time To Put My Socks On is Shain’s remarkably joyful one-man show – a serious comedy about the trials and quirks of one disabled man’s relationship with a non-disabled woman. Although the main character in the play is named Marc, the easy sincerity of the writing and performance make it clear that this is an autobiographical story. We’re shown a man who is smart, self-aware and fiercely independent, who is proud to hold down a good job and own his own property, despite his handicap. Although that handicap is on display for the length of the show – Shain spends most of the play half-naked, scampering across the stage on all fours – the story never makes his situation pitiable. What it comes down to is that Marc is a man, in a relationship with a woman, with all the mess that entails. He struggles with notions of masculinity, the lack of control inherent in a two-way relationship, the loss of independence he fears so much. He relates a familiar story of two kindred souls meeting, falling in love, then struggling to keep that love going.

What makes the play so unique, of course, is Shain himself, and the insight he gives us into his world. Stories about characters with disabilities are rarely comedies, let alone romantic comedies. But here we have the story of a handicapped man who is, above all, a man – a man who wants sex, and love, and power, and his own home, and sex. A man like the rest. With a few differences, perhaps. His speech is laboured, and occasionally hard to understand – but that simply heightens the audience’s attention, making his punchlines all the more funny and satisfying when they land. The sensitivity and unselfconscious humour Shain brings to this presumably delicate subject are admirable, and his sheer exuberance on stage is impossible to resist. This is a very funny, one-of-a-kind show by an exceptional performer.