fringe: intoxication

Christopher Bryant's show, Intoxication, is a very intimate show. Especially when it's his last show and there are only ten people in the audience. And it's a very small room.

But mostly because Bryant gives a lot of eye contact, regularly, and throughout the show.

Intoxication is the result of a traumatic accident and an addiction and finding a way out of bad relationships.

According to Bryant's prologue the show is pieced together from numerous bits of writing he did while recovering from the accident and the addiction. It's part stream of consciousness, part yell into the void, railing against those parts of the modern world that make us closer and further apart at the same time and part break-up letter to a self involved asshole boyfriend.

And there's a lot of great writing and performing from Bryant, but I think that the thing that really pulls the whole thing together into a consistent whole is that sense of intimacy. Because it's hard not to really hear what someone is saying while they're looking you straight in the eye and you're looking back.

There is also a lot of the show that is as relevant to a 20-something self confessed millennial like Bryant as to a 40-something like me and I found myself wanting to nod in agreement at a number of the things he said as he made eye contact with me.

While some of the things he talks about come from a specifically gay sensibility, others are just about people trying to work out what love is and why is it so hard.

If this hadn't been the last show I would be urging people to go and see it right now... but if you run across the show anywhere else, go and see it.

yani's rating: 5 sequinned jackets out of 5