Big Shot: Funny yet Very Very Serious

Big Shot is just awesome.

Jon Stewart, playwright and performer, has your attention before he even gets on the stage with the sound of the Vancouver Sky Train in the dark.

Good one-person plays always amaze me, Big Shot in particular. Stewart does not let any of the various characters overlap in the slightest, making them seem the truly different people that they are. The characters in this play collide in a way that is, sadly, entirely plausible.

A big part of what makes this play so awesome is the subject matter. Big Shot deals with the scarily automated way people live, how people seems to be finding more and more ways to make human interaction and connection unnecessary, how hate only begets hate and much more.  

There are very, very funny parts (my favourite was the fun poked at self-indulgent yuppies) but those funny parts are starkly in contrast to the dark realities of our lives. At a couple points the funny lines didn't get a laugh, because right before something all together too real had just been stated.

Big Shot beautifully displays the slow and steady loss of our humanity.