Foul Play
Created by Dead Unicorn Inc.
Ottawa | 75 mins
Fair is foul and foul is fair, when highschool football turns gruesome nightmare.
I didn’t think the world needed another high school Shakespeare adaptation after the success of classics like 10 Things I Hate About You (1999) and She’s All That (2006), but I’m happy to share that I was wrong!
Foul Play is an original, wacky, hilarious retelling of Shakespeare’s thriller Macbeth and an homage to ’80s horror comedies. A cross between the black comedy of Heathers (1988) and the fated tragedy of An American Werewolf in London (1981), Foul Play manages to find its own unique voice in a crowded genre.
Cast from Foul Play. Photo by Andrew Alexander.
Created and directed by Patrice Forbes and performed by Kyle Cameron, Axandre Lemours, Jeannie MacRae and Michael Kosowan, Foul Play is without a doubt the stand-out of the festival. Cameron and Lemours’ bro-ey line deliveries had the audience at their mercy, cracking up at every joke.
Foul Play is silly but intentionally so. The football team are the Prickly Unicorns, the Weird Sisters are three Bratz dolls, and the prom king and queen are Mac and Beth. But the monologues will catch you off guard with their dark turns and the actors get the chance to show off their range.
Limitations can fuel creativity and with a cast of only three actors, the creators used puppets to supplement the football team to hilarious results. The set and production design were top notch and the soundtrack was fun and nostalgic.
I can’t recommend Foul Play enough; it’s great for families, theatre nerds, but overall anyone who survived the horror of the high school locker room.
Foul Play is at undercurrents until Feb. 15. Tickets are pay-what-you-can, ranging from $10 to $50. For more information and to purchase tickets, see the undercurrrents schedule here.
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