Dale Beaner and the Turtle Boy is a fantastic and fantastical play that manages to combine outrageous satire with a really moving examination of parental love gone wrong. The lives of Dale Beaner (son of a domineering dad and star of the wildly successful Cupcake move franchise), and George Bowman (a boy whose father is so overprotective that he had a turtle shell surgically attached to his son) collide at a celebrity baseball game. The play is written and directed by its two stars, Toronto’s Devon Hyland and Connor Thompson, who each play three roles—baseball announcer, father and son—and who embody each character so believably it’s as if there are six rather than two actors on stage. Chocked full of laughs and haunting imagery, this is one of the most memorable productions of the 2009 Atlantic Fringe.
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This article appears in Sep 10-16, 2009.