This was Keir Cutler’s eighth rant. I have witnessed two of the previous performances and he is consistently provocative and interesting. This rant is a self indulgent look at problems with anger management. The writing is wonderful and the performance including Keir’s glaucoma like bulging eyeballs is over the top, which is more like the medium being the message.
Cutler explains that ranting has been a curse and that his father probably died of it. His hilarious depiction of papa Cutler rejecting a Big Mac because of the mayonnaise on it, is a classic Fringe event. In fact, Cutler lists a plethora of things which, to his mind, deserve a rant because “they make no sense”: getting fired as ESL teacher because he used his class to rant instead of teach, and sleep apnea treatment being denied him because breathing being stopped six times is acceptable, are just a few.
He takes us through the agony of “the talking cure” with a Freudian and his breakup with a very busy woman. He explains how e-mail has made virtual ranting a dangerous tool that could come back to bite one. He finally realizes that the six week rant that resulted from his getting a letter from a Fringe Audience member about Teaching As You Like It, resulted in his truly fine collaboration with his director T J Dawe and brought them both to doing this show.
Keir Cutler is an articulate, intelligent writer whose performances are professional, really well timed, rehearsed and hilarious. One is gently led through a story that is not only laugh provoking; it is thought provoking, and that is what makes Keir’s work so unique and irresistible.
