Review: (Montreal) Leviathan (Fringe)

Shooting the Slapgun
by Sarah Deshaies
@sarahdeshaies

For all the guff about Toronto the Good, there's a truth that Montreal comedy fans have to acknowledge, if they haven't already: Hogtown's sketch comedy ensemble Sex T-Rex knows how to put on a stellar show.

I enjoyed last year's Indiana Jones-esque outing, Callaghan, at Montreal Improv. This time, the troupe comes to Mainline Theatre with another bro-comedy (bromedy?), this time with a slightly more elaborate tale. It's a space odyssey that must have been written by a daydreaming Liberal Arts student: references to Greek myth, Arthurian legend, the Matrix and Thomas Hobbes, and not to mention a certain soon-to-be continued space saga, are dropped willy-nilly.

Space-faring brothers Jonah and Janus Balin are exploring a lost ship now inhabited by corpses and a powerful sentient cyborg called the Leviathan. Awakening her leads to an upending of the Internet, love lost and won, an uprising and a new weapon called the slapgun.

This is physical comedy elevated by a heightened awareness of A/V and outlandishly choreographed fight scenes. Leviathan is (mostly) an original science-fiction story, and though it sometimes rambles, it's well worth the entry ticket.

Leviathan is at the Montreal Fringe