Unidentified Human Remains and the True Nature of Love
He play is true to its title: a painful farce, part tenderness and part shudders of horror, that arrives from the west in a swirl of controversy. Fragments of stage float in space—bed, bar, futon—where a motley assortment of characters in search of their identity leave messages on each other’s answering machines, revel in gruesome tales, have seen it all and bob from sex to violence to an existential void. I’ve never met anyone born after 1960 who wasn’t incomplete somehow, one of the protagonists remarks offhandly. Brad Fraser’s Edmonton is almost Dostoyevskian with its unnerving alleys, its cultural isolation, its small circles of tormented souls at a loss as to what they desire.
The suspense? A psychotic roams at large, killing and dismembering women. The quest? To rediscover love, an emotion that the current decade is incapable of recognizing. The shock: Scathing writing that makes us laugh and yet frightens us, that wields wit skilfully as it plunges lucidly to the very heart of tragedy.
Written by Brad Fraser Directed by Jim Millan
