Review: All or None
All or None – Toronto Fringe Festival – Facebook Page
All or None makes an early, extended reference to The Bachelor, and it fits: This play is full of the same endless ruminations on love and marriage as a subject of destiny, insecurity and commercial-breaking indecision as you’d find on any reality show.
Unfortunately, this is the only thing that the play is really full of, and unlike The Bachelor, it doesn’t have the grand locations, bleached-teeth close-ups or high fashion spectacle to fall back on. It wouldn’t be fair to say that nothing happens in All or None – a misunderstood job interview / first date is a brilliant little piece, and everyone drinks seemingly non-stop – but unless you’re the type to squeal whenever Bret Michaels speculates that someone might truly be the girl for him, I don’t think you’ll get much out of this play.
Mind you, this doesn’t mean it’s not occasionally enjoyable. All or None is not trying to transcend or transform its intended audience (lucky, bored white people, presumably) or mature outside of its pop-cultural framework. All of its characters are immediately recognizable to anyone who has seen a film intended to launch the acting career of a pop singer, and the supporting roles manage to have an entertaining time existing in various degrees of torture over the whiny, insipid main ones. The first 45 minutes or so is the angst of everyone over whether or not their relationships properly furnish their overarching adorations of their own self-importance – lots of drinking here, and an obligatory 4/20 moment – followed by 15 fun minutes of actual story and tension, and finishing with 15 minutes of more discontent over a predictable conclusion.
Really, and without spoiling it, I think the ending is more interesting to view as revenge porn for all those women on eHarmony in their late twenties who think their viper-ish marketing jobs and world travel experiences accredit them to wreck the relationships of the lesser women who stayed home and cared about someone. After all, they’re the ones who really fit in with all those good (see: rich, successful, 99th percentile) guys, right?
Indeed, this play is basically (and cynically) concerned with putting everyone in their place as fate accords it. Moderately attractive women unable to secure more than one-night-stands should have to actually settle for a sense of humour rather than just pay lip service to it, unrealistically wonderful people find their perfect matches and survive betraying their fiancées self-righteously, and women in short skirts end up with obnoxious lost boys who are forever bearded; slouching through their food service careers.
But, of course, we all know this, so what exactly is the company attempting to challenge? It may be a cute little thing, but All or None is about as inessential as it gets.
The Good: Christina Aceto really tears it up in dual roles, providing the vast majority of the laughs overall. It’s the kind of performance that will stick out in your mind no matter how many shows you see this Fringe.
The Bad: When the play ends, you almost get the sense that everyone was going for some kind of sad or mature moment in the narrative. With all due respect, this is a ridiculous play – one that is about people who nobody should really feel sorry for, or at least not for any reason that we’re shown – and I think taking itself seriously sort of pierces the experience overall. Also, everyone is such a relatively thin archetype, with such familiar problems, that the whole thing could really be a lot shorter.
The Final Verdict: You know what? Go see it. A lot of the whining and bitching drags on and on, but it has some good moments, and if you pretend that the play is really supposed to be a satire of what it’s attempting to be seriously – I suggest mentally dubbing the teacher’s voice from Charlie Brown into much of the dialogue – you can have a really good time.
