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Culture Theatre

Breakfast

BREAKFAST by Anna Chatterton and Evalyn Parry (Independent Aunties/Buddies in Bad Times, 12 Alexander). To April 4. 416-975-8555. See Continuing. Rating: NNN


Breakfast, we’re often told, is the most important meal of the day, and in Independent Aunties’ show it takes on even more meaning for its central character.

Marnie (Karin Randoja) is a frumpy, girlish-voiced woman who spends weekends alone in her nightgown. While preparing a morning meal of pudding and coffee, she plays a self-help tape, an innocent action that morphs into a comic and slightly sinister situation that takes her fantasies and self-esteem issues to surreal levels.

Reworked from a Theatre Centre workshop two years ago, the play comes to life vividly in Brendan Healy’s handsome production. Julie Fox’s hyper-realistic set – real fridge, running water – sets up certain expectations, which are effectively upended, Twilight Zone-style, in a later sequence.

Richard Windeyer’s sound design also adds layers of menace to the proceedings, especially in the distorted voices of a pair of characters (played by co-writers Evalyn Perry and Anna Chatterton) who alternately egg Marnie on and represent her inner desires.

What’s lacking in the script, however, is sufficient background about Marnie herself, apart from a memory about a childhood breakfast – a possible allusion to Hitchcock’s film of the same name.

Randoja has a strong stage presence and great comic timing, but without a more fleshed-out character we concentrate more on the technical aspects of the show and less on the disturbing disintegration of its troubled heroine.[rssbreak]

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