Ottawa Fringe 2011: When Harry Met Harry Is The Perfect Fringe Piece.

When Harry Met Harry has all the qualities of a perfect Fringe piece. With his long lanky legs, expressive arms and fingers no less,  Allan Girod and his style of physical performance  reminded me of the  famous Monty Python character created by John Cleeves  who used to do all kinds of funny things with his extremities…so does Girod. But that’s where the resemblance stops. His material is not as quirky or dislocated  as Monty Python’s. It is much more  psychologically oriented.

Harry is the senior print officer of a company, a bureaucrat obsessed with rules, order and procedure.  A marvellous satire of a bureaucratic stereotype who is turned on by a clock…the instrument that regulates the physical performance of a body that has become the  perfectly oiled mechanism of a repressed mind.  

One day, Harry is told that a  "facilitator" has arrived. He is there to give  an interpersonal skills workshop and Harry must attend.  The facilitator  – ..also played by Girod  – is all fluidity, all touchy feely, cool and lose. So the two bodies – both played by the same actor…are completely opposed. The two personalities meet in the workshop and what results is theatrical  fireworks of the kind we rarely see in Ottawa. There is  much  interaction with a more than willing audience, totally engrossed in the goings on, and the perfect denouement for the repressed side of Harry who meets his alterego and is finally  liberated!

An excellent show from every perspective. Dont miss it!

Plays at the  Academic Hall.

When Harry Met Harry

Flaming  Locomotive Productions

from Perth, Australia

written and performed by Allan Girod