The Chronic Single’s Handbook
by Randy Ross
60 min / Comedy, Drama, Solo / Mature
Randy Ross’s solo show The Chronic Single’s Handbook contains a catalogue of sexual misadventure that would rival any Reddit thread. Despite the play’s billing, it’s not really a travelogue, unless you are talking about the daunting journey of a man’s quest to meet himself.
The story begins with Ross unemployed and floundering. He decides to embark on a whirlwind solo tour around the world to answer humanity’s universal question: Why am I still single? What’s wrong with me? Although he claims he’s on a quest to connect to his true love, the female characters all end up as puzzling caricatures. The women are either in a foreign country and therefore shady or crazy – or they are stateside but condescending or boring. As far as I can tell, their only real purpose is to give Ross something to talk to his therapist about.
The real drama takes place on the therapist’s couch. The emotional centre of the story is Ross’s inevitable reckoning with his own fears of intimacy. He is a vivid, unapologetic storyteller, who is not in search of redemption. He takes the audience through his checkered romantic history as if speaking with a trusted confidant. Ross is that unfulfilled, neurotic friend everyone has, always ready with some awkward story coloured with a dash of self-awareness.
If you can stand that friend, you’ll like this play. Ross recognizes his own loneliness and learns to dread it, but by the end he’s no closer to bridging it. Well, at least he’s in therapy.
The Chronic Single’s Handbook by Randy Ross is playing at the ODD Box (2 Daly Ave) until Sunday June 18, 2017. Tickets cost $12 online and at the door. Visit ottawafringe.com for the show schedule and box office info. Apt613 will try to see every show on opening weekend of the 2017 Ottawa Fringe Festival. Read more reviews at apt613.ca/fringe.
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