Don’t Make Me Get Witty: Just Go See Public Speaking.

If any one man could set the standard for great Fringe Theatre at the Toronto Festival this year, it is Chris Craddock, whose brilliant one-man show Public Speaking plays at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse.

Public Speaking is an immediately captivating examination of guilt, responsibility, forgiveness and empowerment in a tightly woven story told from four distinct perspectives surrounding a hostage situation that derails unexpectedly when one man tries to adhere stringently to his unconventional ideology. Craddock opens the play as a motivational speaker, Patrick Spencer, who advocates the mantra “It’s not my fault and I don’t care anyway.” This ideology encourages purging oneself of feelings of guilt, by throwing all remorse and shame into the furnace of forgiveness and seeks to open its follower’s eyes to the reality that people only live their own true lives as their own true selves when they rid themselves of primitive feelings of compassion and concern for others. These, Spencer says, trap us into lives built on compromise and sacrifice which can lead directly to destructive behaviour, such as alcoholism, which is not, of course, the alcoholic’s fault, but can be blamed on all those who are preventing him from living his true life. Craddock then morphs magically into this incredibly compelling homeless giant man who manoeuvres through the back alleys of the city with a perfect mixture of gruff gentleness and insecure vulnerability, for whom nothing is so bad because he’s on heroin. He gets quickly mixed up with Johnny the Drug Dealing Punk, who Craddock plays brilliantly with a Caribbean accent chattering faster than a train barrelling out of the station, so much so that other characters make repeated reference to the fact that Johnny is nearly impossible to understand; all to great comic effect. When Spencer’s daughter, Diana, a young sex addict, is kidnapped by the giant and Johnny and held for ransom, all these unlikely characters are suddenly accelerating toward the same dramatic conclusion. Diana is the most stereotypical of the characters in the play, but her strength of character continues to shine through her typical spoiled teenage girl cattiness and the relationship that develops between her and the giant man is genuinely poignant.

Public Speaking is a shining example of truly gripping playwriting. Craddock manages to keep his audience laughing, while also offering up characters to care about, driving action and mounting excitement and tension. With signature postmodern irony, he encourages his audiences to reflect on the larger themes of collective responsibility and individual compassion and to examine and question what values our society ultimately rewards and privileges when quantifying a person’s “success.”

As an actor Chris Craddock is a tour-de-force, switching between voices and creating clear physicality that allows these characters to almost leap up beyond his body and take on a more mythical presence in the theatre. It is a performance that left me both breathless and in awe. With such talent coursing through his veins, it is little wonder that Chris Craddock is the recipient of four Elizabeth Sterling Haynes awards and two Dora Mavor Moore Awards.

Bradley Moss has directed the show with fantastic use of lighting, which reflects the darkness of the worlds that his characters inhabit and the murky shadows help Craddock transform into each one, especially the giant man. As a partnership, Moss and Craddock are strongly reminiscent of Brooks and MacIvor, and the quality of their work together is comparable.

In short, Public Speaking is simply brilliant. Make sure to catch this show while it is in Toronto (or go see it in Edmonton as part of Theatre Network’s 2010/11 season). I wouldn’t want you to blame yourself for missing it so ardently that you spiral into a tailspin of alcoholism, kidnapping and heroin addiction. Although, that wouldn’t be my fault and ultimately… I don’t care anyway.