Review by Barbara Popel
55 min | Comedy Solo | PG
According to his press kit, Kurt Fitzpatrick has been performing at Fringe festivals since 2004. Cathedral City is based on his personal experiences (write what you know?), specifically his 6-month bout of severe sciatica. Sciatica is an extremely painful spinal condition which left him barely able to walk. (I can vouch for the level of pain – I’ve had sciatica several times, and my husband was bedridden for 2 years 9 months with it several decades ago. It’s brutal.)
Fitzpatrick underwent a variety of treatments and eventually had lumbar surgery. While being given painkillers (the notorious drug oxycontin) and later while being operated on, he “visited” alternate worlds peopled with characters from his previous Fringe shows. In other words, pain, narcotics and anesthetics transported him into a hallucinatory universe of his own making. There’s a nasty camp councillor, a nutty professor with a time machine, a little Negro girl and her mother, a homeboy, a movie fanboy, a crazy substitute teacher, and probably a couple of other folks I’ve forgotten.
Now, hallucinations can sometimes be fascinating jumping off places for art, even for comedy (this performance is classified as comedy). But the trouble with Cathedral City is that the short vignettes seem to be more interesting to the performer – and perhaps to his fans who are familiar with all of his previous plays and movie references – than they are to the average audience member.
It’s rather like being asked to appreciate a string of in jokes when you aren’t “in” on all the references. They can be mildly amusing, but that’s all.
Fitzpatrick is a personable performer. I’m glad for him that the surgery got him walking again (his joy during his rapid post-surgery recovery reminded me, poignantly, of my husband’s rapid recovery after a radical change in his physiotherapy). I’d be pleased to see Fitzpatrick in one of his other shows, so I could meet some of the characters he’s created. But Cathedral City didn’t engage me as a comedy.
Cathedral City by Kurt Fitzpatrick is playing at Studio Leonard-Beaulne (135 Seraphin-Marion, University of Ottawa) on Friday June 21 at 7:00pm; Tuesday June 25 at 10:00pm; Thursday June 27 at 7:00pm; Friday June 28 at 5:30pm; Saturday, June 29 at 10:30pm. Tickets are $10.
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