Review: Amy Zuch’s Key to Key

Amy Zuch’s Key to Key – Toronto Fringe Festival – Official Site

I was in the Comedy Brawl with Amy Zuch last summer and have seen her perform a few other times: She is very funny. Her self-depreciation sneaks up on you a bit, because by appearance alone she doesn’t really look the type to be so down on herself – career unseen, you might think she’d put together this year’s Sara Hennessey Town – but Key to Key is here to explain all that. Amy Zuch, as it turns out, used to be sixty pounds heavier, have bad teeth, bad skin, and lived alone in a hotel room with nobody to reach out to but room service.

Like any autobiographical solo show, Key to Key lives or dies on the resonance of its authenticity. Even if you identify with it, you scrutinize it that much harder. As the story of a person lost in the fantasy of creative career success before its undertones of anger over a lousy personal appearance and a consequently shitty life bubble to the surface, I was as enthusiastic to cast aspersions on this play as I was to see it.

But I cannot: It is great.

Zuch spouts cheerful neuroses full of hoping to become a Disney animator to herself, the audience, and cartoon shellfish of her own creation, but of course there is nothing crazy about any of it: Obsession with artistic achievement is a perfect hedge against self-loathing and a lack of self-esteem, particularly when you are young. Your lack of success in your lofty personal ambitions hasn’t yet begun to mirror your lack of success with other people, and it genuinely seems like the long shot by which you will prove yourself (after, of course, everyone better off than you now eventually fails.)

Then, of course, you grow up, and you find yourself with neither what you never had nor what you tried to get instead – the world going on all around and without you – and realize that there is nothing left to do but either make a change or do nothing itself. Zuch walks us through all of this with a candour that never feels forced, and focuses on her real issues rather than self-indulgently lionizing her own bravery.

She also doesn’t cut corners, and talks openly about how struggles with her appearance are tied heavily into obsessive-compulsive disorder, family tragedies, and how some of the solutions were not triumphs of the will but rather of the wallet. She also doesn’t fall into the trap of making it all about friends and family, humourously reminding the audience that the people who love you can end up being the ones who hurt the most.

I feel like I’ve spoiled enough of it, but I was really pleasantly surprised with this show, and hope dearly that it isn’t overlooked in the huge crunch of Fringe, and competing interests. Please stop caring about soccer and go see this play.

The Good: In addition to everything I’ve already said, there are musical elements to the show that also help to keep it moving at a good pace. When she goes to belt out a song, you imagine that the quality of her voice will be strictly in the spirit of the comedy it contains – you will be surprised. She can sing.

The Bad: Zuch soft-pedals a lot of how miserable and personal rejection is, making it seem only slightly awkward, and I don’t think she fully goes to the bottom of the complexity of how the overweight both hate and take solace in shitty food. She had the tension and quiet rage to throw those French fries over our heads and smash them into the wall if she wanted to – she should have.

Final Verdict: If you grew up fat and obsessed with trying to make the beautiful things you could not be yourself, this is the must-see show of the festival. If you don’t like it, it’s because you don’t know anything about it. Also, go fuck yourself.