Swimming to Cambodia

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This is my favourite show from the whole past year. Yay!

Don't miss this show! The venue is new and people seem to be having trouble finding it. But it is a good one with easy parking. Shawn makes this script his own and takes us on quite a ride. Well written and well acted.

A fellow reviewer compared this show to Gus Van Sant doing a Psycho remake. The problem is you can go rent the original Psycho and still enjoy everything the original audiences did. While you can rent a version of Swimming to Cambodia, you never get the real sense of the one man show. A man (or woman) standing (or sitting) in front of an audience, telling a story. Watching the sweat beat off their brow. Listening to the voice crackle at tense moments. Shawn does an amazing job of channeling Spalding in this show. A well worth while effort and one of the best shows this year.

» Swimming to Cambodia

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Looking for a nearly impossible theatrical challenge? Take an iconic monologue by one of the undisputed masters of the form and breathe fresh life into it, without diminishing the script’s original power. Such is the task facing Shawn Watson with Spalding Gray’s Swimming to Cambodia. Perhaps even more relevant now than when it debuted 20-odd years ago, Gray’s tale of The Killing Fields remains a powerful piece of theatre and Watson does it proud with his captivating, maniacal and high-energy (at least, from the waist up) performance. Simple lighting, an evocative sound design and confident direction by Graham McDonald make this an enviable meeting of script and talent.

--J.T.

Venue 7: Thursday 8:45, Saturday 6:15, Sunday 6:00

To read my review of this play (and others in The Fringe) go to www.plankmagazine.com