Reviews - Fringe 2017

Fringe 2017 Review: Misfit

By Ciaran Taylor-McGreal
Published July 24, 2017

I've been wondering if Misfit made me think more than it was intending. On the surface, it appeared to be a play about Marilyn Monroe trapped in a psych ward and treating the audience as if we were a hallucination, a way for her to continue the lifestyle she had before she was committed.

We live in the age of the diagnosis, a time in which our problems are routinely solved by someone in a white coat saying "Take this pill." So naturally, setting a play during a time in which problems were solved by isolation in psych wards is interesting. The age of "hysteria and lunatics."

Nowadays, the isolation is caused by medication and social anxiety, a theme that I found to permeate through all three plays that I saw at B Contemporary Gallery.

Interestingly enough, the play didn't portray Marilyn Monroe the way I was expecting. I assumed the play would treat her as a tragic figure who was merely misunderstood. But instead it chose to portray her as vain and egotistic. It made me wonder if she was a product of the Hollywood machine, or instead someone who would be attracted to that in the first place.

I'm gonna state right here that I enjoyed the play and would wholly recommend it. It's short but takes advantage of its time limit. In other words, it doesn't overstay its welcome.

However, I do have a nitpick. While the play was good, the venue did not have the best acoustics for singing. There was a slight echo, which overlapped with the vocals and caused everything to sound a bit muddled.

Luckily, there wasn't a lot of singing and the play was mainly focused on the monologue. But if you need to kill 20 minutes and find yourself on James Street, then go see Misfit!

Misfit
Misfit

Ciaran Taylor-McGreal is an aspiring writing and sleep deprivation specialist. He is 22 and spends too much time procrastinating.

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