The Bidding War: sheer comic brilliance carved from the cold heart of a crisis
23 Nov 2024 - Photos by Dahlia Katz

Sam, protégé of Greg, is hosting his first open house. He has a personal connection to the house through a past attempted romance with June, the half-owner of the house with her stepmother. Sam has surreptitiously arranged the listing through the stepmother. A variety of agents and prospective buyers arrive and a bidding war, and The Bidding War, begins. Director Paolo Santalucia (The Wrong Bashir, Prodigal, Orphans for the Czar, Four Chords and a Gun, ;Bed and Breakfast, La Bete, Animal Farm, The Goat or Who is Sylvia?, Mustard, The Taming of the Shrew) has assembled a huge cast, eleven without a weak link among them. He puts them through their paces, with clockwork precise timing, on a classical farce stage with doorways to slam and stairs to climb. The characters, at a dizzying pace, enter and exit, connive and compete, and there is nary a moral center to any of them. Just as we develop an affection for a character, it is human instinct to search for that moral center, a despicable trait or venal flaw is revealed. As well as hilarious, The Bidding War is a realistic portrayal of Toronto's real estate market.

Playwright Michael Ross Albert coats the copious ethical lapses with one-liners and slapstick as the plot spins rapidly out of control into skilfully orchestrated chaos. There are betrayals, insults, violence, skulduggery, and that old saying that 'it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye,' is proven apt except in this case it's still funny. The Bidding War is so uproariously comic because it is so bitingly true. Satire merely reflects reality. Bon mots about the price of houses and the epidemic of the homelessness are biting, and a central plot point about developers and their effect on neighbourhoods is bleak. The reliance on gags where a character suddenly switches off their moral code in pursuit of property and thus profit, threatens to sink the buoyancy, but somehow it is just so damn funny. Albert's central thesis seems to be that houses are no longer bought for homes, but rather bought as investments. And this has led to a crisis, both of housing and of humanity. Sadly, he is absolutely right. Joyfully, he is ingeniously comic while propounding his thesis.

The first act escalates with imperceptible precision. Characters, their backstories revealed swiftly but with just enough detail to create the illusion of three dimensions, zip in and begin to interact, shift allegiances, peel away their facades. One only marvels at the timing afterwards, I was too busy laughing to take legible notes. Throwaway lines turn out to have great comic import when they come to fruition. Ludicrous props become lethal gags. No-one can be trusted and no-one misses a cue or fails to draw our eyes and ears to where they need to be, or away from what comes next. Ninety minutes pass in what seems like ten, and the comic, horrific, pay off before intermission is extraordinary. Unfortunately that leaves the second act, necessarily a little more sombre and sedate, a bit flat. Our expectations for more of the same are mostly dashed and while frequently humorous, the second doesn't achieve the vertiginous giddiness of the first act. At its core, the characters and events in The Bidding War are despicable.

But villains are always the most fun and what despicable delights are in store. Because it is an ensemble piece, everyone stands out. As each character plots and grasps, our allegiances shift as well. It is impossible to pick a favourite or laud a specific performance, they are all exemplary, so, alphabetically: Aurora Browne (The Cold War, Gash!) revels in being the most unscrupulous, but then she is a politician as well as a real estate agent. With unapologetic glee she wields her wit, her sexuality and a complete lack of principles in the pursuit of profit. Sergio Di Zio (Four Minutes Twelve Seconds, ;Rockabye, Between Riverside and Crazy) is a suave, slick agent undone by his shattered dreams of being an actor. And he does a side-splitting riff on Mamet that makes us believe he might have been, like Di Zio is, a sterling thespian. He also gets the line that particularly tickled the theatre industry heavy audience on opening night. Izad Etemadi (Let Me Explain, Mad Madge, Box 4901, The Beaver Dam) goes from loveable to daffy to dangerous at the drop of a sashay, as the younger half of a gay couple. His over enthusiasm for the house is hysterical, but his later mini-monologue on the value of home is as close to a heartfelt honest emotion as The Bidding War allows.

Peter Fernandes (Kelly v Kelly, Fifteen Dogs, Rose, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Romeo and Juliet, Love and Information, King Lear, Onegin) utilizes his puppy dog charm to create a frazzled but determined neophyte. Going from lovesick to calculating to a bittersweet maelstrom of confusion and hormones without ever losing sight of the prize or losing our empathy. Veronica Hortiguela (Prodigal, Every Little Nookie) is saddled by the more outlandish plot contrivances, but she carves out a spunky heroine who is a perfect foil for Fernandes in their doomed anti-rom-com. Seeing her dreams dashed would hurt if only they weren't so ridiculous. Amy Matysio (The Wizard of Oz, Repetitive Strain Injury) delivers a lot of boffo physical comedy as the heavily pregnant Lara. The victim of bodily function jokes turns mama bear with a startling ferocity. Her hapless husband Gregory Prest (The Inheritance, De Profundis: Oscar Wilde in Jail, Jesus Hopped the 'A" Train,  A Streetcar Named Desire, Little Menace, Rose, Bed and Breakfast, La Bete) gets his share of physical comedy with a side of violence that is wincingly real as well as comedic. A political journalist reduced to substack, his moral fall is the steepest and he is betrayed in a shockingly horrible hilarious manner after which he somehow visibly deflates.

Fiona Reid (Hedda Gabler, The Audience, London Road) comes the closest to stealing the first act. Her ditzy grandmother, struggling with the concept of apps, wanders in and out of the action, an unsteady still center that the others speed around. By the time her initially innocent appearance is stripped away, we are too giddy with laughter to be shocked. Steven Sutcliffe as the older, less secure, half of the gay couple dispenses his one-liners with cold calculation. He takes a back seat to Etemadi's more flamboyant characterization, before wresting center stage from everyone, once dramatically, and once in a comic bit that single-handedly justifies the second act. Sophia Walker (Casey and Diana) is buttoned-down and brisk until her chance at devious dealings arrives. Then she dives in with delicious delight. Most astoundingly, in a rueful moment she almost makes the audience sympathetic towards the plight of real estate agents. Almost. Gregory Waters swaggers through a himbo role that he physically embodies tastily, but spins with an animalistic fervour that turns literal. As a fitness influencer with a sideline, his technological interaction with one of his fans is momentarily shocking in its brutal realness. More shocking is his evident enjoyment of its shallow ego stroking.

All the performances are better than they needed to be, no-one takes the easy way out of riding the laughs and whiplash speed. There is true grace in the way that the plot and comedy is handed off from group to group with subtlety and respect. Virtues that none of the characters exhibit. Perhaps that is the one spark of warmth in The Bidding War's cold, cold heart: That so much artistry can be lavished on a nasty topic in order to make an audience laugh uproariously at foibles we all recognize. And many possess. Swept up in the laughter in the theatre, rapturous with praise at the curtain call, reflecting during the trip home. To whatever home is.