Last Friday night, I took a bus to the exchange district. I went because I was on a mission. Part 1 of my mission was to go see a play in the Rachel Brown Theatre; part 2 was to come home and write a witty and poignant review of the play on this blog, as part of an assignment for a creative writing class.

Given that the forum for my review happens to be this blog, I’m going to do my review in two parts. Firstly, I’ll do a review of the play itself, and then (in keeping with the theme of this blog), I’ll do a review of the bus ride that got me there.

The play I saw was one in a series presented by Theatre Projects Manitoba called In the Chamber 2010. Entitled, The Last Men, the play was essentially composed of two hour-long monologues by actors, Gordon Tanner and Steven Ratzlaff, in that order.

In the first segment of the play, Tanner played a man videotaping himself in a hotel room. The tape was obviously intended for the eyes of the owner of the company the man worked for, and dealt with the hog barn fire of July 31, 2008, during which around 15,000 hogs burned to death at Cluny Colony in Cluny Alberta.

Though a little long, the monologue, which was masterfully acted by Tanner, went into great detail about the fire and the conditions in which the hogs were forced to live in the barn. At the same time, however, it had another element of disillusionment and ethical awakening, which I found very reminiscent of the 1976 film Network, or the more recent Michael Clayton.

At one point in the film, Tanner’s character began discussing things that “seemed like a good idea at the time”. To illustrate his point, he showed a photo (on a projector he had set up in his hotel room) of a person leaping to his death, out of the World Trade Center, to escape from the flames in the building. Not only did I think that this was an ineffective example of the concept the character was getting at, but also I found the reference extremely offensive in a way that didn’t fit the mood of the play, and couldn’t help but let it colour my reaction to the rest of the play in a negative way.

The second half of the play came in the form of another monologue, this time delivered by actor Steven Ratzlaff. Ratzlaff’s character was a man who, along with his estranged wife, had lost a baby during the Health Sciences Centre’s infant care scandal. The character had a very unique take on the situation; he wasn’t angry with the program or doctor that led (due to neglect or improper care) to the death of his son, but rather at the inquest which determined that his son shouldn’t have died. He argued that it was this finding that made it impossible to go on living in any real way.

Over all, both monologues were well written and very well acted, though, each ran a little long, causing the entire evening to seem to drag on a little.

The real highlight of the night for me, however, was the bus ride, which brought my friend Chris and I to the theatre before the show.

The driver was a middle-aged man with a well-groomed mustache, and who was wearing the familiar navy blue uniform of Winnipeg Transit.

He was friendly and efficient and drove the number 18 bus very confidently, with very few jerky stops and starts.

The bus itself was relatively clean, and surprisingly free of any sort of stale urine smell, which was a huge bonus.

Another bonus was that neither Chris Nor I was stabbed during our ride to the play.