Becoming Banksy has nothing new to spray
Becoming Banksy
K (out of 4) Written by Cory Terry and Elan Wolf Farbiarz. Directed by Benjamin Blais. Until Oct. 14 at The Redwood, 1300 Gerrard St. E. BecomingBanksy.com
Don’t expect Becoming Banksy to help you understand why the anonymous British street art is having some kind of a moment in Toronto.
American writing team Cory Terry and Elan Wolf Farbiarz premiered their play in 2015 at the Winnipeg Fringe Festival and the current Toronto run might have been planned with no knowledge of the exhibition
The Art of Banksy, which ran in an old warehouse on Sterling Rd. over the summer and was derided by critics as an empty cash grab.
Terry and Farbiarz, who have designs on an off-Broadway run for Becoming Banksy, maybe don’t deserve such rebuffs for their play, which mostly just suffers from a lack of discernible plot, an extremely unlikeable main character, underwritten female roles and comedy that only hits when playing off the natural chemistry between two long-time indie theatre collaborators, Daniel Pagett and Caitlin Driscoll.
But then I spotted the Banksythemed T-shirts for $30 each on the box office table and whatever patience I had floated away like a red heart-shaped balloon.
Becoming Banksyseems to follow a similar trajectory to Terry’s and Farbiarz’s previous offBroadway comedy, Channeling Kevin Spacey, in which an unhappy man finds a new side of himself by adopting the guise of a celebrity.
In Banksy, obviously, the celebrity is Banksy and the man is a failed landscape artist named Will (Anurag Choudhury). Recently left by his wife Mary (all female characters are played by Driscoll), Will is persuaded by his best friend Mark, himself a street artist, to take a guys’ trip to Toronto.
Shortly after landing, through a series of events that are difficult to string together, Will becomes mistaken for Banksy, who’s rumoured to be in town for an exhibition of his work.
Egged on by Mark, who foresees a big payday from this rumour, Will goes along with his new identity and works with an ambitious reporter to get the word out, until his deceit is uncovered … or is it?
There are local jokes clearly written by people who don’t live here, a reliance on funny accents and stereotypical women and Pagett does the heavy lifting by staying light and off the cuff. Pagett’s and Driscoll’s ease makes Choudhury’s constraint as Will feel even more pained. There’s a bitterness to Will that never ceases and an obstinacy to every person, situation and thought that crosses his path that’s awkward, until it turns frustrating, until it turns plain sad.
Terry and Farbiarz have a few things to say about the art world; they skewer art fans high and low. But the overwhelming sensation when Becoming Banksy ends is that this is an attempt to lure an audience with a famous name.
It’s no accident you exit by the merch table.