Reunited troupe adds a tint of nostalgia to typical silliness
Playday Mayday (out of 4) Created and directed by Matt Goldberg, Mike Hughes, Dan Jeannotte, Jacynthe Lalonde, Colin Munch and Anders Yates. WeAreUncalledFor.com or Theatre Passe Muraille 416-504-7529.
Sometimes sketch comedy can seem like a kind of Neverland-like artistic practice that keeps its artists perpetually young and carefree. After all, the process of creating a sketch show is based in playing around, making jokes, stretching the imagination and working as a team. Sounds like recess to me.
Indulging this analogy even further, the latest show from the Montreal/ Toronto sketch troupe Uncalled For reminds me of the 1991 Steven Spielberg film Hook, in which Peter Pan (Robin Williams) has left Neverland to become a stressed-out, overworked lawyer, but rediscovers his inner Lost Boy when he returns to save his two kids kidnapped by Captain Hook.
After a hiatus of a few years — during which the troupe members have moved cities, taken new jobs, started families and bought cars — Uncalled For reunites for a brand-new show that explicitly examines the glory of childhood games and the drudgery of adult schedules and responsibilities.
Playday Mayday tells Uncalled For’s clearest thematic story yet, as the group is known for tangential riffs on absurd subjects (like the nonsensical dream world of their last show, Hypnogogic Logic).
Created by Matt Goldberg, Mike Hughes, Dan Jeannotte, Jacynthe Lalonde, Colin Munch and Anders Yates (Jeannotte and Lalonde are not performing in the Toronto run, instead comedian Caitlin Howden is added to the bill), Playday Mayday shows what happens when five childhood friends take a break from work and meet up at their old favourite play spot by the ocean.
When Bruce (Munch) is suddenly called in for a shift, the other four accidentally toss their phones into the water and venture into the “Out of Bounds” to retrieve them. But once they cross into the OOB, all rules are off.
The sketches that unfold in the OOB are typical Uncalled For silliness, with the tint of nostalgia layered on top.
An early standout is a scene in which Checkers (Goldberg) is seeking to buy a firearm from 8-Ball (Munch), but everything in his arsenal is mimed with their hands (complete with self-produced sound effects) with the skill, I imagine, they’ve been honing since grade school.
This scene is especially interesting in the way it captures the absolute seriousness with which kids play these imaginative action games — but in a moment turn the world they’ve created completely absurd with the limitless possibilities of make-believe.
At the same time, Uncalled For pokes fun at the childhood games that required almost no imagination at all. In the game Fashion Princess, Yates simply poses while the others pretend to be paparazzi.
It’s hilarious in its simplicity, and celebrates the kind of game with no real rules or winners — or point, actually.
But Uncalled For reminds the audience of the fun of a game for a game’s sake, while at the same time, can make fun of a more contemporary, adult game of corporate world domination by imagining a game of global Twister between Google, BP and McDonald’s.
While Playday Mayday comes full circle with a satisfying conclusion involving Bruce’s job at Rules-Corp and his evil boss Mr. Wolf, not everything lands appropriately.
A courtroom scene full of tongue-twisters is impressively written (and enjoyable to watch the performers attempt, fail and re-try), but it devolves into confusion in the end, especially since it’s almost impossible to make out what they’re actually saying (Hughes’s delivery, especially, is lost in the large Theatre Passe Muraille space).
And there’s one layer too many to a scene about a literal food fight, which I’m still trying to puzzle out in my head.
It’s not a seamless reunion for Uncalled For, but hopefully the end of their hiatus means there will be more to see from this group sooner rather than later.
Uncalled For reunites to examine the glory of childhood games and the drudgery of adult schedules and responsibilities