All We Need Is Stories - A Review of James Judd’s A Minor Midcareer Retrospective
A Minor Midcareer Retrospective is playing at the McManus Studio in London (Ontario) at various times throughout the London Fringe Festival. You can find the showtimes here.
If you’re even a moderate Fringe goer, you’re familiar with the autobiographical one-man show by a hyphenate comedian-actor. We’ve all seen this trope succeed, and we’ve seen it bomb.
This time, it succeeds. But it does a little more than that.
By stripping down this genre (if we can call it a genre?) to its bare essentials -- one man on a stage, telling a few unrelated autobiographical stories -- and still managing to entertain, James Judd has gotten me questioning what the value of this genre truly is.
A Minor Midcareer Retrospective has almost nothing. One chair, a martini glass, and a book for props. Two or three different lighting setups. A handful of recorded sounds to underscore the storytelling. This is usual. It is not expected that a Fringe show have much more than this.
Judd takes it a step further though. The night that I go, he tells three stories, and there is no narrative arc, no thematic development, no conclusion whatsoever. He even warns of this at the beginning of the show. All of the promotional material for the show promises different stories on every night. So even the expectation of consistency between performances is thrown out the window.
And yet, it works. It works really, really well.
A good deal of why this play works comes down to Judd’s ability to develop a rapport with his audience. And on the night I see the show, the audience is tough. There’s nothing quite like performing a one-man comedy to a crowd of fewer than thirty people. A few minutes in, though, and Judd has us all laughing, and edging forward in our seats, eager for more. His embodiment of each character, and his emotional and physical commitment to each and every moment are enough to force even the grumpiest face to crack a smile and laugh.
I think there’s something a little more to A Minor Midcareer Retrospective than the performance though. When, at the beginning of the show, James says he’ll do away with narrative arcs, and morals, a symbolism, and thematic development, and just get down to telling good stories, I’m surprised to feel myself relax. It’s refreshing to know that nothing intellectual or political is being presented. By taking away all the extra stuff, Judd manages to provide exactly what I’m looking for: stories.
Good, entertaining, funny, true stories. What more could we ask for?
