The Cultch’s production is a grab-bag of eccentricities.
By Sara Bohuch
Photos by Theatre Meele
It’s seven o’clock, and the rain is really starting to pour. The wind’s picked up, and the bright coloured leaves seem like a cheap, empty promise of warmth. The perfect weather to see a play, especially in a venue that allows wine inside.
It’s the opening night for Cozy Catastrophe, and the summary in the play-bill is deliberately vague. I’m apprehensive, wondering if I’ve just signed up for an hour and fifteen minutes of overstrung emoting and bad pacing. I clutch my glass of red in the back row and take in the stage.
It looks like someone has taken great pleasure in trashing the place: the stage is a warehouse, filled with gas cans, milk crates, and plastic sheeting strung from the painted brick. As the lights dim, I’m surrounded by an eerie noise, much like the sound of descending underwater. Then the windows begin to glow a bright, poisonous green, and the screaming starts.
Being blind to the plot is half the fun of going to this particular production, so I’ll try my best not to spoil it. It’s funny in most places, and gloriously weird in others, but remains one of the better apocalyptic productions that I’ve had the pleasure of seeing.
The warehouse setting turns out to function as a safe haven for the few survivors of whatever is happening outside. The event is never discussed in the play, but the effects are seen and observed. Whatever it is that wanders the streets is rendered more alarming by the strange lights and mechanical sounds that menace our champions periodically through the play. As the story unfolds, the set alternatively shakes with impact, drips water from the ceiling, and is lacking in safe havens for the would-be survivors.
The humour, veering from black comedy to physical gags, is engaging and well-delivered. The first 20 minutes of the play are the best, as the cast stumble around in the dark and find each other.
It is the characters that drive this piece, each with their own brand of escalating manic energy. From the time each of them flop, creep, or kick their way onto the stage, you get a good sense of their traits. They are a true gathering of weirdos, their strangeness and eccentricities make them all the more human. Not one of them is overly courageous, or kind-hearted, or brilliant; there are no stock characters or reactions in this production. They are all small, panicked people, hiding in terror in a decrepit warehouse, trying to inject order into chaos and figure out what to do next. The character dynamics are one of the strongest aspects of the play: each character is a hot mess, but they play off each other well.
There remain many unanswered questions by the end of the play. When the time came time for the inevitable sharing of backstories, one character refused to share his. He’s not penalized for it, because there are more important things to worry about during the end of days.
Cozy Catastrophe successfully portrays the apocalypse as an event both big and unnameable, something that catches each character not at their worst or best, but at their most normal and undignified. This, set against the storminess of the apocalypse, makes the dark comedy a perfect pairing for the Halloween season.
