Mr Fox - i am not a mascot

The audience at the performance of Mr Fox that I took in seemed to really enjoy it, which puzzled me slightly as I found it faintly dull.

Not that the source material isn’t rich, it is:  it’s based on writer and performer Greg Landucci’s time as the C-Fox mascot, Mr Fox. The show is filled with numerous amusing anecdotes from his time inside the suit. Landucci is also an engaging and energetic performer. His energy is evident right from the top of the show, where he silently mimes the moves of a mascot, sans the costume. He runs around the audience before leaping onto the stage. This was met with cheering and applause on the night I attended. Clearly, this was an audience ready to be entertained. From the stage, Landucci then silently managed the audience into performing a Mexican wave, which was enthusiastically followed by about half the people there, particularly those stage left. Just as I am by the crowds who follow the commands of electronic scoreboards at sporting events, I found myself again puzzled.

Still, that all sounds fun right, so why so dull? Well, I’m not sure. Perhaps it was the unrelenting nature of the delivery of the material. Landucci never stops – indeed he spends much of the show just trying to catch his breath while still keeping up the frenetic pace. This is a piece with no downtime. There is also something repetitive about the material: “here’s another thing that happened to me in the suit”-type of thing, each concluding with comments he would get from crowds: three examples every time. The anecdotes are interspersed with sequences where he records demo tapes – he wants to become a dj at C-Fox – but these were delivered with such speed that I couldn’t really follow them.

The other problem is that his character work is not particularly strong. He plays the female manager at the station with a lisp and as if she has a dislocated hip; the professor who has made a study of the San Diego Chicken holds his hands together in prayer as intelligent people are known to do (I’m having to type this with my nose because my hands are in that position right now).  Landucci’s a charming enough performer that he really should stick to telling the story in his own voice and from his own perspective.

Although some of the sequences were laugh out loud funny – particularly the one where Mr Fox participated in the Polar Bear Swim at English Bay – there was no compelling theme or narrative holding the anecdotes together. There was one moment, however, where the piece came alive with possibilities, for me. Landucci was so successful as Mr Fox that he was given the rare honour of sharing the, er, field with the San Diego Chicken. Landucci does a brilliant job of recounting this experience. It was as if he had joined some sort of strange brotherhood of mascots, but Landucci doesn’t make enough of this for my taste.

I actually longed to see Landucci in the suit (although I imagine he’d need to be another mascot for legal reasons). I realize part of the conceit of the show was to “see the man inside the suit” but I think a lot of potential for humour and pathos was lost. There is one sequence where he demonstrates Mr Fox rolling around in the gutter of a bowling alley. He jumps up and says it was funny with the suit on. I bet it was.

Again, I must stress the rest of the audience enjoyed it. But then again, they’d jump to their feet at the behest of a giant chicken.

Who are you going to trust?

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