2 B (Or Not 2 B) is a bewitching, very funny two-hander about the strange seduction of Franny - a once promising visual artist specializing in the use of bodily fluids on canvas; now, despairingly, reduced to an increasingly empty existence as an inconsequential dead end receptionist: a hapless loser in love and life. When the play opens, we see this desperate woman applying hair removal wax to her bared left leg as she speaks beseechingly to her ex-boyfriend over the phone. She implores him, placing several needy calls to him between eye-popping, howl-inducing, painful paper strip removals of body wax and leg hair, to dump the new squeeze (one of her friends) and return again to what was once good between them. To her dismay, he refuses to be enticed. Even after she, in a Hail Mary move, colours her friend, his new lover, as someone more STD toxic than infamously deadly Typhoid Mary. Then, just when life cannot possibly get much darker for her, she's suddenly startled by The Intruder - a very unusual interloper to be sure. And a, grip something, suitor to boot.This would-be Lothario is a manifestation worthy of Franz Kafka - if the grimly absurdist master had ever possessed even so much as a smidge of a Seinfeldian sense of humour. The Intruder, in honeyed tones, pitches woo to Franny that unsettles her to say the least. However, to her surprise (and ours), her initial reservations to his blandishments wobble and, alarums, begin to diminish. Will, in the end, The Intruder have his way with her? Be advised. It could go either way. Vanessa Walton-Bone (who wowed audiences lucky to have caught her in last year's Fringe's excellent presentation of Harold Pinter's The Lover) as Franny gives a masterful, hilarious, in-character comic performance that's not to be missed. In the role of The "sweet" Intruder, Reno Anastasia delivers a sly, delicious, wonderfully nuanced comic turn that, to perfection, counterbalances Franny's barely contained confusion, wonderment and anxiety. This very professional production of 2B (Or Not 2 B) is truly and comically bedazzling.
Showtimes: in Neptune Theatre's Imperial Room: Mon Sept 1 3:15 and 8:15; Fri Sept 5 7:00; Sat Sept 6 3:45 and 9:00; Sun Sept 7 8:00 $6:00
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