Craze: raindrops keep falling on my head
3 DEC 2024 - Photos by Roya DelSol

It is a dark and stormy night. There are also sirens and the sounds of shouting in the distance. Gunfire. June and Renee stumble in out of the chaos and proceed to commit individual warfare in their very tasteful living and expensive looking living room. June wants sex, Renee is reticent. They both have more to drink and June hurls barely veiled ethnic slurs. Renee is a technological genius and the house has been fitted with an AI assistant who is unfailingly polite. June and Renee are not polite. June informs Renee that she has invited another couple over, an assistant to the assistant art director at June's advertising firm and her husband, a heart surgeon. Her intentions are clear. The couple, Selina and Richie, arrive, soaking wet but in good humour and confirm June's assumption. Selina says they are in a "monogamous marriage with polyamorous sexuality." Cue the games. Craze is set specifically in the vein of Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, an older couple battling and desiring what a younger couple seemingly has.

A drink is spilled on Selina and the women retire to change, Renee and Richie talk about not wanting children. Richie is black, Selina is Asian, and there is more discussion of ethnicity and how it relates to genetics. There are mysterious poundings at the door and the power becomes intermittent. Renee wanted to be an artist and his large Rothko-lite canvas is reinterpreted as a slave ship by Selina. June fetishizes Richie's blackness but it is Renee who is pinned to the floor for a kiss. Then there is a major plot twist and Craze goes completely off the rails. Yes, the metaphors and symbols that have been planted resurface, but only one pays off coherently. Playwrights Rouvan Silogix (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo) and Rafeh Mahmud have a dozen clever ideas and an urgent desire to communicate their thoughts on racism, capitalism, grief, AI, sexuality, addiction and art, but the ideas fly fast and furious, sometimes, mercifully, with one-liners attached, and all at once. A brittle comedy of manners becomes a screed against the military industrial complex and the advertising industry. Rather easy targets. Especially with all the other more ambiguous and difficult ideas that have been teased.

Director Mike Payette (Come Home - The Legend of Daddy Hall, Choir Boy, Cockroach, Angelique) and a set by Christine Ting-Huan Urquhart attempt to add flash and action to distract from the escalating incoherence, but it is the actors who do the heavy lifting. They are committed and whatever work they have done to believe in what they are saying gives a gravitas that would be powerful if only we were let in on it. Lisa Ryder is magnificent as a frustrated bitter and fading mean girl. A delicious monologue selling Fantasy Cruises rages with innuendo. Ali Kazmi (Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo, Uncle Vanya) as Renee attempts to be the voice of reason but the whirlwind sidelines him, leaving him to react instead of being a worthy adversary. Louisa Zhu (A Midsummer Night's Dream) has an intriguing fragility and gets a very funny speech about her place in the pecking order of the advertising agency. And why it is important. Kwaku Okyere (Roberto Zucco, Choir Boy, Iphigenia and the Furies, Shove It Down My Throat, The Seat Next to the King) is given, aside from the brief flirtation with homoeroticism linked to aggression that is abandoned, so little to do that he winds up as the very stereotype that was previously mocked. For no discernible reason beyond eye candy, he doffs his shirt and his remarkable abs are a welcome if puzzling visual.

That leaves Augusto Bitter (White Muscle Daddy, True Dating Stories, Chico, Iphigenia and the Furies, The Monument, Lear) who has the meatiest role which he bites into carnivorously. His shocking entrance is a welcome jolt of energy in an already frenetic production. The action, accompanied by inexplicable robotic choreography, jumps back and forth in time, possibly in and out of reality. Bitter plays several variations, in age and humanity, of the same character, and gets a death scene that is extraordinary. He, aided by a subtle but devastating special effect, plays his demise with the conviction of that Tosca aria, right to the edge of high camp without toppling over. Committed. After a lot of thought, one is able to piece together clues and admire the structure of Craze. That, and the full tilt performances, make the 80 minutes that felt twice as long almost worthwhile. And the central metaphor becomes clear. Characters keep singing the first few lines of Bachrach and David's "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head," the jaunty, catchy tune a contrast to the comedic horrors drenching the stage. But they never reach the uplifting bridge, where the music soars and the melody and lyrics release and cohere. Much like Craze.