“FOUR STARS” WINNIPEG FREE PRESS
As the lights go down before the opening scene of this absurdist one-hander written by Governor General Award-winning playwright Morris Panych (Girl in the Goldfish Bowl), Diana King's I Say a Little Prayer plays softly in the background.
When the lights come up we find Nash, played by local actor Arne MacPherson, best known for his extensive work at Shakespeare in the Ruins and MTC, stuck in a mud puddle. And there he remains for 70 minutes as he contemplates how he got there and if anyone will ever find him.
As the mud puddle -- a rope and pulley apparatus that takes four unseen stage hands to manoeuvre -- rises higher and higher, you don't know whether to laugh or cry as Nash analyzes his life and his now unattainable future, all while trying to keep a cheery disposition about his extremely odd predicament.
MacPherson is very convincing as the unsuspecting victim, and you can't help but want to help pull Nash out of the puddle, or at least help him attach a note to a passing bird in the hope that some middle-school social studies teacher might find it.
Lots of laughs, a great script and a polished performance by MacPherson make this show stand out as one of the more professional acts at this year's fringe.
-- Demetra Hajidiacos
B+ UPTOWN MAGAZINE
The gifted Arne MacPherson stars in Morris Panych's one-man show, literally about a man sinking into a muddy oblivion. While the philosophical point of it all may be a bit fuzzy, Panych's observations are often keen and humorous and MacPherson captures the desperation of the sinking man with an easy finesse. The production's clever stage design, which actually allows MacPherson to disappear before our eyes, is striking and the power of MacPherson's performance, coupled with Panych's strangely compelling script, gives the play a force whose power carries the audience far beyond the vagueness of its point. - BS
CBC
This funny, thoughtful one-hander opens with a startling image. Mild-mannered Nash (Arne MacPherson) is stuck ankle-deep in a mudhole. His expression of uncomprehending helplessness is amusing. He’s more embarassed by his situation than frightened by it. As the mud rises – thanks to a clever fabric quagmire that rises on poles to swallow the actor – Nash’s persistent optimism gives way to frustration and, in a truly cathartic moment, naked terror. As he inches toward doom, he wonders who might save him, who would miss him, and what he’s made of his life. Morris Panych’s script feels about ten minutes too long, but it surprises to the end and doesn’t wimp out as it ponders the value of a life barely worth living. Fringe vet MacPherson is, once again, in great form, and mines every available moment from Panych’s words. This one will stay with you.
CBC – Michael O’Brien
About Theatre Dirgible
- Theatre Dirigble
- Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada
- First of all: the word Dirigible is generally taken to mean airship or balloon. In actual fact it means “steer-able”. So the early airships – which seem more like a creation of fiction, than a historical truth, and as such, evoke images of new and impossible landscapes – were not just at the mercy of the winds. Theatre Dirigible’s aesthetic focus is on plays that embrace their fictional nature, and, by investigating core issues of the human condition: identity, isolation, memory, reality vs. fantasy, morality vs. convenience, fear of death, and so on - make the world seem larger. We look for plays that are set in unexpected landscapes – landscapes that add poetic resonance to the play’s central themes – and that add theatrical surprise in their staging. In producing Morris Panych’s "The Story of a Sinking Man", we will be launching the company with a play that brings one of Winnipeg’s best known performers to the stage in a tour-de-force solo performance. Theatre Dirigible’s goal is to bring the sort of theatre we are curious about to non-traditional environments, introducing great theatre and exceptional performers to new adult audiences.