Hats off to Fadi Malo and Aidan Cottreau for overcoming that Fringe rite of passage: performing to an audience of one plus a couple of interested creatives. Their show One And The Other, Canadian writer Kent Stetson’s short slice of theatrical polemic, feels thin and undercooked. But the performances are packed with confidence.
Born and brought up English-speaking in Canada, Zaydan’s (Fadi Malo) parents return the boy to the family’s home in Afghanistan. Their aim, one soon subverted by a terrible Taliban attack, is to open an orphanage for child victims of war. Abandoned by his father at a Taliban compound Zayden is shot three times in a firefight before being captured by US forces. Does he throw the grenade that kills several American soldiers? The jury is out on that, but the suspicion is enough to see the 15 year-old transported to Guantanamo Bay where he is held for ten years without charge. The Koran, Mandela’s prison memoirs, and a poetry tome are his only succour amidst brutality and torture. Released back to Canada, Zaydan becomes an unlikely advocate for reconciliation and hope.
In a parallel storyline Kerry (Aidan Cottreau), scion of what seem to be a couple of over-privileged Canadian swingers, find himself increasingly attracted to far-right racist ideology. Clad in a snappy purple suit and man-bun he liveblogs anti-Muslim rants to a motley crew of fellow conspiracy theorists, including the mysterious American Colonel Ironweed (who turns out to be a high school councillor). Plot shenanigans see Kerry arm himself, ready to commit a terrorist atrocity on Candaian soil. Cottreau does his best with Kerry, but the character is woefully underwritten. “I’ve been dead since I was 12” the character tells us, which feels insufficient motivation for the course the writer sets him out on.
A final contrivance sees the two storylines merge. Stetson has one of his characters make his point: “we’re not what’s done to us, we’re what we become”. Fair enough, but there is simply not enough here to explain why either man becomes what he becomes.
Writer: Kent Stetson
Director: Rahul Gandhi
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