Review: Preshrunk at the Ottawa Fringe Festival 2011

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Preshrunk has an interesting concept. Five psychiatric patients go to their regular group therapy session and the doctor doesn't show up. What happens? Well that's what should be interesting; but unfortunately the "what happened to the doctor subplot" breaks the whole thing into tiny pieces. He was murdered and one of the patients is the killer. Written by Alana Kainz and directed by Paul Dervis, the simple story borders on ridiculous. Being pegged as a dark comedy was definitely the wrong choice since I know I wasn't laughing. Was I at least entertained? Maybe for the first half hour, but once they announced the doctor was dead, so was the play. The cast was having fun and you knew it; Alex Kirkpatrick especially really stood out for me, but one or two of the main characters had a noticeably high number of flubs in their delivery of lines. So much so that it started to get in the way of the actual performance. That will probably be worked out in future showings, but it will take some work to fix what's wrong with the story so I'll say that if you're taking in a lot of shows this Fringe, go for it. If you only have the time or money to see a few, Nay.

Category:

Entertainment

Tags:

• yay or nay reviews
• ottawa fringe festival
• preshrunk
• group
• therapy
• doctor
• murder
• theatre
• theater
• live
• william
• shatner
• alana kainz
• alex kirkpatrick
• paul dervis
• Jerome Bourgalt
• Annette Hutton
• Charlie Ebbs
• Rachelle Casseus
• Brian Tannenbaum
• Adam Skanks