Waiting For Garbo - Recyclable Art

Curious Creations brings the anticipated Waiting For Garbo to the Vancouver Fringe Festival of 2016. Writer and Director team Dawn Moore and Desmond Price worked together to create a play focused on recycling and its message is seen, first and foremost, in its content. What makes Waiting For Garbo stand out is its method of recycling dialogue, images, songs and characters, and piecing them together throughout the play. As you watch, a familiar melody will echo through the theatre, reinvented. You will recognize a retelling of a story, repurposed for this play. Bits of public lectures, video and script have been mashed together into the artistic creation of Moore and Price. Essentially, Waiting For Garbo is a recycled play about recycling, and that, in itself, is what makes it so interesting.

The first act begins quietly with the line, "You are what you do, not what you say." This powerful phrase is reiterated straight to the final scene so hold on to it. Waiting For Garbo follows a group of professional recyclers who find out that their landfill will be shutdown and they will be out jobs. Furiously, they scrounge for solutions. "Many people believe only the gods can save this situation," Jardim the Prophet, played by Lara Foley, states ominously.

Meanwhile, three Wisemen are searching for Garbo, a mysterious and exquisite actress, and the remaining missing reels of her films. They refer to Garbo as "the divine woman". In their search for Garbo, the Wisemen find the Recyclers, who, in turn, are looking for someone to save them from their predicament. (Perhaps a divine god?) When the Wisemen and the Recyclers meet, you can expect silly encounters, ukuleles and endless humorous songs you are sure to sing along to.

Moore and Price layer their play with satiric tunes meant to sharpen your outlook towards recycling and your personal responsibility as a contributor to the problem. Their message comes full circle when the Recyclers become distracted from their dream. In their effort to save themselves, they are forced to decide if they, too, will contribute to the recycling problem.

While Waiting For Garbo mostly centres around recycling, the plot skips about, shifting the play into a satire mocking religion. This may muddle the focal point for the audience, considering these two subjects are of such substantial importance on their own. At times, it may feel like these topics aren't credited with the amount of time needed to explore each fully.

That being said, the actors and actresses find a balance, bouncing off one another, allowing for bizarre dramatics and goofy synergy. The atmosphere feels slaphappy and whimsical, and the lyrical numbers will definitely have you tapping your feet, an amused grin on your face.