Review: (Ottawa) Self Help

Foster Child Another comedy by our king pleases the crowd at OLT by Jim Murchison Last night as the final strains of Oh Canada rang out, a gentleman in my row leaned forward and literally cracked heads with the woman sitting down in the row in front of us. The Three Stooges couldn’t have played it any better. It was a sign that I was in for an evening of farce. Self Help is a play about the compromises we make for survival and comfort and the things we lose along the way as we make our life decisions. It is also about love and sex. Writer Norm Foster has written a play that has considerable disdain for the snake oil salesman and hucksters that pitch self improvement.  Rather than do an in depth exposé of empowerment gurus, Foster  holds them up to examination by lampooning their banal platitudes and hyperbolic assertions that we can achieve anything by ridding ourselves of doubt.