Zero Tolerance – A Look at Family

“Zero Tolerance” is a highly autobiographical piece performed and written by Bárbara Selfridge looking at caregiving, disability and family. Selfridge’s narrative weaves between various points in the past and various characters in her family. She speaks directly to the audience and leaves the house lights up thereby breaking down the fourth wall. There is no escaping what she wants to tell us.

Selfridge wants to tell us that having a family is hard and it sucks and sometimes people don’t or can’t do what they want to or should do. The narrative is well constructed and at times touching and at other times funny. I was glad to have heard the story... however, I felt that the additional under-the-breath commentary or name calling was unnecessary. As an audience member I wanted to be trusted to draw my own conclusions about what was going on.

I’m not sure theatre is the correct place for this sort of writing. Selfridge is a strong writer and the weave of the narrative was interesting and held my attention. She uses the themes of disability, infidelity and prime numbers to unpack the characters in the story; at times I felt the generation gap between her approaches to these matters and my own. Selfridge’s performance was at times rigid and over rehearsed. She paces about the stage in a highly choreographed manner that seems neither natural nor comfortable. This made it hard for me to completely relax into what was going on. I felt constantly reminded it was in a theatre, watching theatre. “Zero Tolerance” is an interesting story told in the wrong venue.