Final Play

Crazo Productions / Grande Prairie, AB

By: William Lang Posted: 4:36 PM CDT Sunday, Jul. 19, 2009

Three fly boys are shot down and taken prisoner by a North Korea-like state, which tries to brainwash the men into playing children’s games where the winner dies.

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Three fly boys are shot down and taken prisoner by a North Korea-like state, which tries to brainwash the men into playing children’s games where the winner dies.

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Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 19/07/2009 (5975 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Three fly boys are shot down and taken prisoner by a North Korea-like state, which tries to brainwash the men into playing children’s games where the winner dies.

It’s an energetic and fairly tight effort from this Alberta troupe of amateur actors and, at 35 minutes, it’s not boring.

But there are two problems: the performances are a bit stilted — lines written to be naturalistic and staccato, like two brash Americans arguing about trivial stuff, come off a bit wooden, and the actors play it like they’re stuck in an elevator instead of a prison camp; and the tension between resisting and succumbing to the brainwashing is muddied. If that’s the central conceit of the play, it’s not clearly drawn and it only becomes semi-clear in the final scene.

—Mary Agnes Welch

From the official Fringe Festival program:

This chilling, provocative play is concerned with sophisticated brainwashing and the effect of stress and confinement on three flyers shot down in an unnamed war and held in a prisoner-of-war camp where they are undergoing a desperate struggle against an unseen captor.