TRUTH
Created by Martin Dockery
Produced by Tim C. Murphy, Ottawa
Review by Barbara Popel
60 min / 14+ / Storytelling, Comedy, Solo / Sexual content
Martin Dockery’s latest offering is a story which starts out sounding true-to-life but becomes weirder and weirder as it progresses.
In March 2020 as the world reacted to COVID-19 and many fled city homes for country residences, Dockery, his wife Vanessa and their baby daughter, decamped from urban Brooklyn to Dockery’s godmother’s cottage in the Long Island village of Montauk.
They knew no one there, and COVID-19 isolation meant their new “friends” were people they greeted on the streets or in the grocery store. One of these “friends” was a woman who gifted them with a hideous homemade woolen baby carrier. As Dockery says, “homemade” means “poorly made”. His description of the bizarre gift had the audience in stitches.
Martin Dockery. Photo by Tanja Tiziana.
Nevertheless, when the woman treated the family to a restaurant patio lunch (their first restaurant outing in months), they felt obliged to bring their daughter in the woolen baby carrier. When Dockery was caught short on the way home, his description of the situation had the audience roaring with laughter. Warning: This story might put a damper on your future Christmas celebrations. (You’ll have to see the show to find out why.)
His next adventure with an Uber driver was also reasonably plausible and quite funny.
So was his account of snooping around an empty mansion. But it veered into fantasyland and was the main reason this show is classified as 14+ with sexual content. It wraps up with an impassioned anti-Trump rant. Well intentioned, but the “empty mansion” story didn’t do it for me.
TRUTH is playing at ODD Box from June 14–21. Tickets are $14 plus service fees at the Fringe box office (3rd floor, Arts Court, 2 Daly Avenue), and at the two satellite box offices (LabO in the Ottawa Art Gallery and La Nouvelle Scene). 5 and 10 Show Passes are also available. Visit the Ottawa Fringe Festival’s website for the show’s schedule and check out their online schedule here.
