This one man show played at the Vancouver Fringe Festival but I saw it on its second last night at the Firehall Arts Centre in East Vancouver. It's a cute but sparse theatre that lets you take your liquor from the in-house bar to your seat. Fittingly enough, the performance was cute, sparse and intoxicating.
Yes, that's right: a show called NggrFg was cute. The performer was a sculpted black gay man but he embodied every character from middle class white father (and mother) to his own 7year old self to his ignorant bully with near pitch and posture perfection.
With such a specific life experience - "nigger...fag" - to tell, I was actually three time distanced as a white, heterosexual woman. But the poignancy broke through that wall.
There was a little preaching at the end (I would have preferred to let the experiences stand for themselves) but it was an amazing performance and I was gripped. My viewing partner said, with brutal honesty, "I was expecting to be bored and I couldn't think one man could keep me interested, but it was really great."
So if you get a chance to see this nggrfg aka Berend McKenzie (though his play tells us it should be the other way around, or, of course, there should be no aka at all) in this performance or any other I highly recommend doing so.
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