Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 3/7/2019 (651 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.
Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand couldn’t catch a break. After surviving one attempt on his life earlier the same day, he kept a date with destiny when a confused chauffeur took a wrong turn and delivered him directly into the path of an assassin on June 28, 1914. Worse yet, the driver reversed the car and came to a stop within a few feet of the astonished killer, who took the opportunity to make the infamous shot heard ’round the world.
During an animated hour of storytelling, Toronto writer and performer Adam Bailey recounts a tragedy of errors, incorporating bizarre-but-true historical facts about Ferdinand and his doomed wife Sophie, the normally ineffectual young man who ended their lives and the political climate that sparked the First World War.
Bailey doesn’t need to take much artistic licence: the truth is stranger than anything he could make up. It’s also eerily entertaining, and notably enhanced by exceptional ambient music and sound design from Toronto composer and actor Alex Eddington.
— Pat St. Germain