Review
TRUTH FACTORY
Lunchbox Theatre
Starring Brian Jensen and Dennis Fitzgerald
Written by Scott Sharplin
Directed by Gail Hanrahan
Runs until November 22
Bow Valley Square
Like Edmonton playwright Scott Sharplin, I stand guilty of spending my time in the checkout line reading the headlines on the supermarket tabloids. After all, where else could I learn about Meg Ryan’s failed plastic surgery, or that Saddam and Osama have married and adopted a shaved ape baby?
And, also like Sharplin, I’ve always thought a behind-the-scenes look at a wacko tab like the Weekly World News would make for a great satire – only, not the one that Sharplin has written for Lunchbox Theatre.
With Truth Factory, Sharplin has set out to be at least as nutty as the WWN itself, but his play isn’t half as amusing as that ridiculous rag. It’s more like one of those badly conceived skits that they save for the last half-hour of Saturday Night Live, after they think most people aren’t watching anymore.
Stu (Dennis Fitzgerald) and Mac (Brian Jensen) are a pair of tabloid writers who, for some unknown reason, have to work in the basement storage room of their paper, where they spend their time brainstorming the bizarro stories about bat babies, voodoo monkeys and Elvis sightings that are the tab world’s bread and butter.
Stu’s the seasoned, philosophical scribe who reels off axioms like, "The truth will set you free, but bull brings home the bacon." Mac’s the less experienced keener who makes the mistake of trying to stir genuine weird facts into their carefully cooked-up hogwash – much to his partner’s dismay. Truth is stranger than fiction, Stu reminds him, and that’s why nobody believes it.
However, even stranger is that their fiction is starting to come true. First, one of their outrageous story ideas mysteriously turns up in a rival tab, and then another proves to be real and almost sparks a lawsuit. Finally, their wildest imaginings begin appearing as legitimate news stories in The National Post and The New York Times. Like true tabloid types, the pair quickly conclude that there must be a widespread conspiracy to tap their brains.
Sharplin obviously wants to have fun with the elusive notion of truth and how much the media is able to actually will things into being, but even a play that questions the nature of reality has to have some believable place to start from. Not only are Stu and Mac not credible as hack journalists, they’re not even credible as characters. They’re just a couple of sketchy cartoons who don’t even occupy a recognizable workplace (and set designer Colin Ross’s generic storage room doesn’t help). Sharplin gives them traits instead of personalities, and not a glimmer of a background or back story. They speak in a convoluted patter that proves fitfully entertaining, but the playwright has mastered the art of being glib without actually saying much.
Fitzgerald and Jensen are wasted in this material, although like true professionals they do their damnedest to try to make it work. Fitzgerald, as a twitchy, shifty-eyed Stu, gets to be the quirkier of the two and grabs most of the meagre laughs. Director Gail Hanrahan, perhaps realizing how lame the script’s oddball humour is, has also given them bits of clumsy slapstick to try and make things funnier. Maybe she should have tried adding Saddam and Osama and a shaved ape or two. |
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