Undercurrents – A Quiet Sip of Coffee. An Animal Parts Production from Toronto/New York.

By Patrick Langston | February 18, 2014

Published in the Ottawa Citizen, February 14.

Anthony Johnston, Nathan Schwartz

Photo by Lili Jamali

OTTAWA — Be careful what you wish for: it may lead you into territory where your reality splinters, and you face questions more complicated than you’d ever anticipated.

That was the experience of best buddies Anthony Johnston and Nathan Schwartz — or at least it seems to have been the experience, reality being a moving target in this rambunctious and sometimes very brave play. A decade ago the two, one gay and one straight, were fresh graduates from theatre school wanting work. They wrote a prank letter to a fundamentalist organization in rural British Columbia that had as its mission the reformation of gays. In the letter they asked for funds to develop a new play Never Cry Wolfman.

To their surprise, they were invited to workshop the show, which didn’t actually exist, as long as they participated in gay conversion therapy.

They agreed, and A Quiet Sip of Coffee is the play that resulted from a lark about a play.

Under the direction of Annie Tippe, the two use video, music, improvisation and storytelling to root around weighty issues like authenticity, self-delusion and friendship, mostly staying on this side of the earnestness such topics invite……