Straight From That Side of Town: a brave but awkward memorial

Straight from that Side of Town

Catherine Montgomery (writer/actor) is a spitfire manic performer and she pours everything she has into her balls-to-the-wall --  sorry, pussy-to-the-wall -- performance in Straight From That Side of Town. Whether you want to go to that town is another story, but hey, this is the Fringe. Sometimes we're forced to go to places we don't really want to go to.

Trace Morgan's mother has just died, and she will do anything to forget this and everything else around her. She will travel galaxies away from any human being that drives her into “Emotional Overloads”. It appears that all the characters have tendencies to “Emotional Overloads” and Catherine exudes that in a brave performance that perhaps only someone from Barrie could give. She is lewd and crude in her role as an alcoholic and sexoholic.

In terms of the actual setting, we're not quite sure where we are, but at one point she does mention Barrie, Ontario. I asked a friend who lives in Ontario to describe Barrie and she described it as “ ...full of rednecks, hippies, and old obese women who shop at Wal-mart whilst wearing wolf-howling-at-the-moon sweatshirts.” With that context it makes this story of “escape” a little clearer.

This is the type of one-person-show which the Fringe is famous for, but falls into the trap of being a performance-based piece that's full of emotion but somewhat lacking in substance. The story hasn't been sufficiently clearly mapped out for me to care about the emotional “cosmic” journey these characters are on. It's as if I walked into a memorial service for someone I don't know. I have no context, therefore I feel no sympathy, and the end result just feels a bit awkward.

I grew up in enough of a red neck suburb to recognize some of the character portrayals Montgomery gives and, to her credit, her performance is frighteningly accurate. I've met some of these characters as I've stumbled through homophobia of grade school, and the drunken sluttery of divey bars. Quite frankly it turned me off, and I'm just not sure if that's what Montgomery was going for. Being a performer myself I have to give props to the gutsy performance Montgomery gives. It's not easy trying to tell a story of mourning and I can only assume that she is drawing from personal experience.

If you're not afraid of a dirty, sometimes ugly portrayal of bereavement, then you'll be in store for a great performance. I, on the other hand, will try to dream of the cosmos and get back to ignoring the memories of people I intentionally left behind years ago.

For showtime information go here.

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By Michael J Unger