Dead Metaphor

Haley McGee, Nancy Beatty, Noah Reid and Eric Peterson in Dead Metaphor. Photo Credit: Cylla von Tiedemann.

Acclaimed Canadian playwright George F. Walker’s witty and nihilistic Dead Metaphor  has finally arrived in Toronto.  The play debuted last year in San Francisco, where it received rave reviews following the cancellation of its originally scheduled first run at Toronto’s Factory Theatre.

Walker’s clever farce wages a double-barreled assault on the modern military and business worlds by taking the concept of an elite army sniper marketing his "transferable skills" to its logical conclusion. The dark comedy follows Dean Trusk (Noah Reid), a top military sniper, upon his return from Afghanistan as he attempts to reintegrate into civilian life and obtain a job in a bleak market.

Although he’s excellent at shooting people, Dean is not exactly the smartest guy you will ever meet. However, he’s obedient and really nice looking, so he soon lands himself a plum job as the personal assistant to politician Julie Stewart (Helen Denny) who can best be described as Hitler in the body of a female news anchor. Julie happens to be the wife of Dean’s repressed, left-leaning employment counselor Oliver (Michael Healey), and Dean soon finds himself in the midst of a deadly marital feud. As if that weren’t enough, Dean’s controlling ex-wife Jenny (Haley McGee)—who he’s about to re-marry—is pregnant, and his outspoken, old-school socialist father Hank (Eric Peterson) is losing his mind as he dies of an advanced brain tumor under the care of his kindhearted and long-suffering wife Frannie (Nancy Beatty).

It sounds like the plot of a so-bad-it’s-good soap opera, and that is kind of what you get with Dead Metaphor. Walker’s satire of both the modern political class and those who serve them is as funny as it is disturbing, even though its reliance on overdone hot-button political issues is slightly tiresome.  Dead Metaphor boasts truly stellar performances all around, and Eric Paterson’s standout performance as the equally formidable and ridiculous Hank is an absolute joy to watch.

Dead Metaphor runs until June 8 at the Panasonic Theatre. Visit mirvish.com for more information and to buy tickets.