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Fibber

Written by Michael Spence
Directed by Jacquie P.A. Thomas
Starring Michael Spence, Joel Benson, Madeleine Donohue, Bethany Jillard, Kat Sandler
Theatre Gargantua
at The Theatre Centre in Toronto

Do you want the truth? According to Fibber, a new piece by Theatre Gargantua, you don't. And when you do get it, you can't handle it.

Playwright Michael Spence and the cast have set out to examine “the slippery relationship between the truth we instinctively seek and the untruth our happiness depends on.” At least that's what Fibber's press release says; it sets out the themes much more clearly than the unfocused show itself.

To explore his subject, Spence, who multitasks as performer and set designer, has tied 1,020 knots in 2,000 feet of rope, creating two pieces of mega-macramé that the agile cast of five transform into surreal bedrooms, car crash scenes and giant spider webs. The set is inventive, as is the eye-catching way director Jacquie P.A. Thomas has the actors move up and down the rope structures.

Spence and Theatre Gargantua had a critical hit with their 2005 treatise on cyber communication, e-DENTITY, but the company's highly physical approach is the wrong one for this psychological and philosophical subject matter. Fibber comes across as a random assemblage of shallow vignettes and baffling monologues.

Spence delivers a speech about how the play has multiple personality disorder, before being strangled to death by another actor. A child asks his mother if he's going to die, and she lies to him. A man is rejected by his lover when he is being honest, but beds her with feathery flattery.

None of these scenes last long enough to engage with; none of the characters stand out. It doesn't help that Thomas has the cast play their parts in a wide-eyed, gormless, edgeless style that resembles children's theatre.

Few of the sketches venture beyond the philosophical insights you could hear for the price of a box of Timbits at a hot-boxed dorm room near you. The lame parables include one in which a cashier is suddenly accosted by customers who don't understand her requests for payment for gum and Captain Zappy comics; the twist is that she's the crazy one for believing in a thing called “money.”

There are a few more promising scenarios here, for instance a debate between two yoga moms played by Bethany Jillard and Kat Sandler about whose child they would save from a hypothetical disaster. It was generating some real tension until the sketch self-destructed in a fit of metatheatrics. The character Sandler is playing stops the action because she wants to protect herself venturing into dark psychological territory. Unfortunately, the whole play suffers from that fear of leaving the comfort zone and going anywhere dangerous, threatening or remotely interesting.

In between the thin sketches, the cast runs and rolls around the stage frantically. Thomas, perhaps taking a page from Evil Dead: The Musical, has the performers fight epic battles against their errant hands, which squish their faces and throw them about the theatre.

Every so often, they slow down so that one of Victor Mare's animations of doors can be projected onto their bellies.

This all takes place to incongruous music composed by the director, which sounds as if it should be backing an advertisement for a high-end watch or perfume featuring Armani-clad models driving sleek European cars through a rain-slicked streetscape at night.

Gargantua's signature stagecraft remains engaging, but if it's insight you seek, you'll learn more from staying home and cranking up Fleetwood Mac: “Tell me lies, tell me sweet little lies.”

Fibber continues until Oct. 18 (416-260-4660).