Show: Toronto Fringe Festival 2009 – “Baggage: A Non-Musical Romp Through One Catholic Gay Man’s Dating History (with Breasts for the Straight Men)”

Written and Performed by: Shaun McCarthy

Theatre: Factory Studio Theatre

So here’s an experiment. Go to Toronto’s Gay Village. Stand at the corner of Church and Wellesley and seek out a gay man, ideally in his late twenties/early thirties. Offer to buy him a drink (or the equivalent of the $10 ticket price of a Fringe show) in the afternoon and get him to tell you about his dating history for an hour. You’ll likely hear some funny stories, some surprising stories, and some mundane stories, much like any average person may have at that point in their life. Was it engaging? Possibly. Was it a commanding artistic experience worth putting on stage? Probably not. But that’s what Shaun McCarthy has done with his one-man show Baggage: A Non-Musical Romp Through One Catholic Gay Man’s Dating History (with Breasts for the Straight Men).

The show is less a show and more a rant with the aid of slides. McCarthy goes through his dating history and all the clichéd markers are there. The hesitancy and confusion of dating girls in high school, the celebrity crushes, the awkward dating of the early twenties, the one-night stands, the first love, the first fight -- they’re all mentioned. And it sounds like everything you’ve heard before. McCarthy isn’t breaking any new ground with his monologue. I was hoping for some interesting insight seeing as the Catholic Gay Man portion of the title is ripe with conflict, yet religion hardly plays a factor (and heads up fellow Straight Men, if you’re going merely for the Breasts in the title, they are nowhere to be seen).

For one hour, McCarthy sits perched on a stool, matching his stories to the musical samples and PowerPoint slides on the TV monitor beside him. Everything is timed, perhaps to a fault. He takes brief pauses here and there and, as a result, the anecdotes seem contrived, even if they are trying to be heartfelt. That’s not to say McCarthy hasn’t fallen on hard times because he certainly has. But when he’s speaking of some undeniable tragedies, the amateur slides (all projected just on cue) seem to downplay the emotion that should be felt.

McCarthy perhaps wants to channel his inner Carrie Bradshaw and make his own Toronto Gay Man’s take on Sex and the City. However, there’s nothing inherently distinctive about his piece. It feels a bit self-indulgent, as though McCarthy is looking for a date and telling the men of Toronto how relatable he is and what a nice guy he is. And that may be the case, but this is a theatre festival, not a singles dating convention. In life, I’d root for a guy like McCarthy to be happy and find the man of his dreams. But his contribution to the Fringe Fest wasn’t a show for an audience, but rather a therapy session for McCarthy. Sure, the audience could relate, but where’s the art? And, more generally, where’s the theatre aspect of this production? You don’t need to make some grand artistic statement within the Fringe Festival. But you do need a purpose. Looking for a date just isn’t good enough.

Written by :

Gabor Pertic

 

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