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Culture Stage

Fringe Review: A Nurse’s Worst Nightmare

A NURSE’S WORST NIGHTMARE

Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace

See show info here

Rating: NN


Zabrina Chevannes is an able stand-up comic with a warm, likeable presence and an infectious smile. But her autobiographical solo comedy isn’t ready for the Fringe. It’s an awkward combination of stand-up (I’ve seen her perform some of these stories on a comedy stage) and storytelling, seemingly undirected – although Paul Hutcheson gets a credit.

It’s not that Chevannes doesn’t have some compelling stories to tell about her Jamaican immigrant parents, her two children and the work she does at a retirement home, not to mention her husband, who joined a religious cult and terrorized her.

But she hasn’t shaped the material into anything resembling a show. Segues are blunt and confusing. Chevannes tells us things when she should show or illustrate. And worse, she doesn’t seem fully present as a performer she’s always a half-second behind her material.

Organizing the show into anecdotes about her nightmares – as a nurse, a mom, a comic – could work. But as it stands, there are too many gaps. Why did she marry her husband? Why did she want to enter comedy after she’d become a nurse? Digging deeper and more honestly into these and other questions might help her find what she’s trying to say.

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