Sheer provocation

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This article was published 07/06/2025 (497 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Neither Here Nor There, a liminal comedy from Sick + Twisted Theatre, will certainly divide audiences.

That is by design: as guests walk into the auditorium at Prairie Theatre Exchange, they’re given the option to sit on either side of a patchwork curtain, predetermining at least one dimension of the unconventional experience to come.

Well before Thursday evening’s hostess, the insightful, freewheeling Lara Rae, induces the first of many chuckles, the concept of choice is already introduced, the first steps down individual paths of desire to be trodden by theatregoers venturing together into the dark unknown of an original production.

Billed as a retelling of the legend of Tiresias, who was turned into a woman and stripped of vision after forsaking the Greek gods, Neither Here Nor There boldly challenges widely accepted narratives surrounding disability, gender, autonomy and desire.

Starring a mixture of blind, low-vision and sighted actors, working alongside trans performers, the production is built with a mission to construct and then dismantle binary thinking, tearing down brick walls and replacing them with open windows.

One needn’t be a Classics scholar to feel included, because Neither Here Nor There, written by committee and directed by Debbie Patterson, is loosely professorial in style, best exemplified by Rae’s hilarious, honest autobiographical asides about her transition and a registered therapist’s (Gislina Patterson) impassioned stump speech about the true value of public bathrooms, given to a sex-obsessed Zeus (Tyler Sneesby), who, to be fair, has his fair share of mother-father-sisterwife issues to work through.

There’s a rich endowment of male appendage jokes, a treasure trove of vagina jokes and some achingly silly puns about French geography that might land les auteurs in writers’ gaol.

From start to finish, Neither Here Nor There is an oddly compelling and compellingly odd concoction that forces audience members to consider the bias of their own perspectives, and whether their sightline is as clear as they’d previously thought.

Because the set is bisected by a sheer curtain, each audience member’s field of vision is intentionally blurred. On one side is the ancient domain of Tiresias (Vivi Dabee), who was rendered blind and turned into a woman for seeing too much and angering the gods, becoming an oracle with the ability to communicate most easily with winged friends.

On the other is Ty (Vivian Cheung), a trend forecaster with a power that could make even Zeus quake with envy: with a single phone call, she can make skinny jeans cool again.

Both performers rest on chaise longue, which provides one of the best running, or sitting, jokes in the show. If a piece of furniture can exist at the nexus of chair and couch, can’t we find our identities somewhere in the middle, too?

The production, a tad overlong at about 100 minutes, is strengthened by all elements of design, which support one another in novel ways.

Before the action begins, a digital assistant, voiced by sound designer Dasha Plett, describes the set, which includes Zeus’s home on Mount Olympus and the office of Ty’s tech overlord boss. Then Plett describes the colour, style and material of each costume, designed by Sarah Struthers, introducing the actors wearing them with a healthy dose of shtick.

“Lara Rae is five-foot-10, and unlike Cinderella, she can’t find a single shoe that fits.”

Taking surprising turns, which are usually fruitful and less often belaboured, Neither Here Nor There is ultimately a well-crafted forum for honest, intentional theatre, rooted in purposeful listening, curiosity and reconsideration.

The gods will agree on that.

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com