Review: (Ottawa) Chase & Stacey's Joyride (Fringe)

Fasten Your Seat Belts

by Jim Murchison
Twitter @JimMurchison

Chase Padgett returns this year with his new playmate Stacey Hallal. The word play was never more appropriate to describe what performers do. This is a play that is all about playing. Hallal and Padgett are skilled improvisers and the structure of Joyride provides a framework that allows them to know their final destination with a map that has some holes in it. In fact the audience with a word provides the critical info on where the start point of the Joyride is and that substantially changes where Chase and Stacey are from night to night.

Every audience will get Padgett's brilliant musical overlays, Hallal's wildly exuberant search for contact with the other side and the duo's hilarious attempt at nasty sex without naughty words, which if it were dance would be a pas de dirt.

For laughs Joyride is a sure bet and because of the improvisational aspect it will never be the same twice. The chemistry they have with each other is equally as potent as the connection they have with the audience.

June 13 - 29