Live and in person at Tarragon Theatre, co-produced by Tarragon Theatre and Modern Times Stage Company, in Association with Theatre Artaud, in Toronto, Ont. Playing until Dec. 15, 2024.
Written by Rouvan Silogix and Rafeh Mahmud
Directed by Mike Payette
Set and costumes by Christine Ting-Huan Urquhart
Lighting by Arun Srinivasan
Sound and composer, Maddie Bautista
Cast: Augusto Bitter
Ali Kazmi
Kwaku Okyere
Lisa Rider
Louisa Zhu
I often quote the theatre’s website for a blurb about the play to see what they say it’s about. Here’s the “bumph” on Craze, by Rouvan Silogix and Rafeh Mahmud:
“Out of the storm and straight into the inferno.
Two couples shelter from an epic storm for a late night drinking session where technological mayhem and sexual frivolity may turn into something more… At times surrealist, dangerous, and laugh-out-loud outrageous, Craze is sure to keep you right on the knife’s edge.”
Hmmmm, well “laugh-out-loud” might be a reach of wishful thinking, as is “Craze is sure to keep you right on the knife’s edge” unless that means ‘squirming’, and I don’t mean that in a good way.
Craze uses Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee as a framework. It’s late at night. 1 am. There is that terrible storm outside and June (Lisa Ryder) and her husband Renee (Ali Kazmi) have just come back from a party at her ad agency and they have been drinking. The couple bicker and snipe and drink. Their conversation is peppered with references to her whiteness and his brownness. She is the ad executive and he is a creator of technology using artificial intelligence. He asks their ‘system,’ Buddie, who is at the door if someone is pounding on it; what the weather is like outside, and other questions one needs to ask the information system in the home. We also learn later that Renee has created drones used by the military.
June has invited another couple over, perhaps to engage in ‘swinging’. Renee is not happy. They continue bickering and wrangling as well.
The other couple arrives. He is Richie (Kwaku Okyere) a surgeon and he is Black. His wife is Selina (Louisa Zhu) is Asian. She works at June’s ad agency and is the assistant to the assistant art director. The repetition and correction of what Selina does, does go on. There is more conversation about: where are you really from, and various questions that one knows are insensitive and also play into the racist theme. June comes on to Richie even echoing Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? when she puts her hand waaaaay up Richie’s inner thigh to make a sexual connection. Neither couple has children but that might be a mystery. There is an interesting twist on who comes on to whom other than June, that is quirky.
Craze references racism, sex, swingers, the world of advertising, artificial intelligence, deadly military drones, the fear of the unknown, perhaps a passing nod to living room comedy only without the laughs and a lot of esoteric philosophical musings about the world, the future and A.I.
The set by Christine Ting-Huan Urquhart is very stylish, well-appointed and soulless, which seems apt for this couple. There is a Rothko-type painting that is interpreted as being a depiction of a slave ship. Director Mike Payette has carefully directed the play and his stalwart cast to suggest a sense of heightened emotion with a tone that is deliberately declarative, making the characters seem deliberately fake. Everybody is totally committed. The play is wildly crazed with its invention, twists in the story and the efforts to be esoteric.
Pity the play is incomprehensible.
Co-produced by Tarragon Theatre and Modern Times Stage Company, in Association with Theatre Artaud.
Plays until December 15, 2024.
Running time: 80 minutes (no intermission)