The Plank Panel experience a Cosy Catastrophe

*The Panel*
Alison Broverman is a playwright and arts reporter. She fears a zombie apocalypse most of all.
Ann McDougall is a playwright and storyteller. She fears nuclear fallout where everyone mutates and slowly dies, but not before they go crazy and kill each other.

The Show:
Cozy Catastrophe, an apocalyptic farce from Vancouver theatre company Rumble Productions working in tandem with Theatre Melee. It is being presented as part of the National Series at SummerWorks.

Ann: This play was so much fun! I worried we might be in for a pretentiously bleak post-apocalyptic drama or a dumb zombie comedy but it was neither. Or rather, both, since the tone shifted wildly between farce and tragedy. But somehow, it worked!

Alison: It did work (at least until the last 15 minutes, but I'll get to that later), and I think that's largely due to the considerable charms of the cast. For all its over-the-top-ness, Cozy Catastrophe rang oddly true. This is probably exactly what would happen if four hipster strangers barricaded themselves in a warehouse during the apocalypse. It wasn't until the entrance of the fifth character that I stopped buying it - was she injured? Was she a zombie? What kind of apocalypse was it, even?

Ann: Yeah...I have to agree. The possible-zombie was awkward because up until that point great care was taken to leave the actual catastrophe ambiguous. It worked well because the audience filled in the blanks themselves. What could knock down buildings and shred shirts? An alien invasion? Horrible speculation is a big part of the fun in this play. I also liked the characters playing a particularly horrible version of the "would you rather..." game.

Alison: I liked their depressing stock-taking of their various skills (or lack thereof). Our generation is clearly NOT prepared for aliens or zombies or whatever the hell was happening. I liked the ambiguity until the maybe-zombie showed up. At that point I thought they crossed the line from "dramatically effective ambiguity" to "confusing ambiguity". It was like they knew they had to end the show, and they felt like SOMETHING had to happen, but they didn't quite think it through.

Ann: Social comedy was actually where Cozy Catastrophe really hit the nail on the head. The total lack of survival skills among multimedia artists and ESL instructors and the compulsive looting of shopping bags was funny because it felt so true. I also loved how the characters discussed their fear of the maybe-zombie, whom they eventually brutally killed, like water-cooler gossip. Those moments of satire were great, and the cast were really on their game.

Alison: Absolutely. The hysterical undertone of the whole thing really rang true as well. And I loved the running gag with the rotten ham in the fridge - the script was unabashedly, hilariously gross, actually, which was really fun and rare to see on our staid Canadian stages.

Ann: Graphic blood and endless poop jokes are rare on the Canadian stage. This is a comedy for a traumatized world. I love a good post-apocalyptic play. If that excellent production of Bluebeard that was at the Toronto Fringe this year had a wacky younger sibling, it would be Cozy Catastrophe.

Cozy Catastrophe by the Company; Directed by Craig Hall and Courtenay Dobbie; Presented by Rumble Productions/Theatre Melee; Featuring Erin Mathews, Andrew McNee, Michael Rinaldi. Juno Ruddell. Part of the 2008 SummerWorks Festival. For more information and show times go here.