Dancing with rage: Chutzpah mingles with rage as Mary Walsh bares her soul on the stage.

Photos Barb Gray.

It takes a particular kind of chutzpah to ambush political figures and conduct mock interviews. It takes nerve for a woman of a certain age (actually 61) to sport a ridiculous warrior princess outfit, complete with plastic sword. But both are as nothing compared to stripping down to unflattering, expansive and expanded spandex, black underwear and making fun of the aging body squeezed in and flowing out.

As Newfoundland comedienne Mary Walsh a.k.a. Marg Delahunty says, even the nuns who despaired of her through her schooldays never thought she would sink this low. But that is part of her charm for audiences. Her self-deprecating humour in general and this moment in particular (further enhanced by attacking the flesh flow with electrician’s tape) is one of the funniest and most endearing aspects of her one-woman show, Dancing with Rage.

Taking on an assortment of characters, most first introduced through the CODCO comedy troupe and the mock TV news show This Hour Has 22 Minutes, Walsh changes and adjusts her makeup and wigs or hair on stage, talking a mile a minute all the time.

The character changes are impressive. Walsh’s sheer energy is amazing (especially as she points out, she can be considered middle-aged only if she lives to be 120 or more).

But this show is not only about having fun and skewering politicians, the Catholic Church and Rogers Cablevision. The weakness here is that the attacks on the prime Minister and the church are so virulent that they become distasteful regardless of one’s political or religious affiliation.

In addition, the serious, autobiographical thread running through the show is frequently at odds with the raunchy, garrulous humour. The connection with her anger at the aspects of the world she satirizes is the rage she feels because of her unhappy childhood as the daughter of alcoholic parents and at having to overcome her own alcoholism later in life. Most of all, she is angry because she is losing her sight. (She has been diagnosed with age-related macular degeneration.)

Determined to find the illegitimate child her mother had forced her to surrender for adoption (that part of the story is fiction, she says) while she can still see, the warrior princess travels the country. Her quest is eventually successful, but this part of the show is not, despite being propped up by video excerpts and strobe lighting.

Simply put, Mary Walsh as a standup comedienne in her unflattering underwear is more effective than the aging cartoon princess rocking between drama and comedy.

Dancing with Rage continues at the Irving Greenberg Theatre to April 6.

 

Dancing with Rage

Written and performed by Mary Walsh

Great Canadian Theatre Company

Directors: Andy Jones and Mary Walsh

Set: Stephen Osler

Lighting: Boo Noseworthy

Sound: George Robertson

Costumes: Marie Sharpe

Video producer: Paul Pope