The Ventriloquist Circle

Matt Wilson's "The Ventriloquist Circle" is a camp surrealist murder mystery set in the world of fetish porn. (That a play with this title is not a tale of madcap puppeteers and their voice-throwing hijinks will be but the first shock of the evening). It turns out, a ventriloquist circle is three or more fisters/fistees each performing that act on the next in a great big circle of transitive fisting. Are you getting the image?

The play opens with porn star and impresario Cox The Milk Man (a handsome, near-nude Daniel Piper Kublick) phoning in a confession to his priest during a break from the filming of one such ventriloquist circle. "How far can the arm be inserted before fisting becomes a crime against God?" he asks. The play will go on to raise many more (and answer very few) outrageous questions about power, control, morality, lust, and the endless fight for freedom from social constructs.

Both Wilson and director Kathryn Hamilton have structured the work as a send-up of the very industry it portrays. The play is populated by caricatures, cardboard cut-outs of iconic American characters: the Lonely Housewife (a charming, funny Christine Bullen), the Milk Man, The Girl Next Door, and The Lumberjack.

Two police officers investigating the murder speak robotically, facing into the audience as though reading from cue cards. All the bad acting, strange dialogue, and ludicrous plot lines for which pornographic films are notorious are on display here, except without the promised money shot to anticipate.

The Milk Man turns up dead after a spontaneous threesome with The Lonely Housewife and The Girl Next Door. The Lonely Housewife is questioned, and we find that she's been making movies for some time with The Milk Man. Somewhere along the way they decided that using cameras to record their "films" was a minor and unnecessary detail in production.

The detectives go on to learn that rather than producing real films, The Milk Man had simply been staging fetish sex scenes in random places and calling it a movie. Early in the investigation a horse (in bondage-style leather bridle and boxing gloves-cum-hooves) is introduced as a suspect. It is presumed that the Horse is actually a person who has fetishized the animal to the point of living as a horse, at least in films. But perhaps it was meant to be a real horse. Why not?

In fact, that is a question the playwright must have continually asked himself throughout the creation of this play. Why don't we throw in a lumberjack and have The Sexy Waitress squirt mustard all over his face. Why not? Why don't we write in an aerobic dance number with an instructor who's physically incapable of removing his fuchsia unitard. Why not? Why don't we have the Milk Man return from the grave with a sausage pizza? Why not? Attempted rape? Why not? Gratuitous nudity? Why not?

As in porn, the plot is not really the point here. "The Ventriloquist Circle" is an exercise in shock theatre that, at every turn (and lighting change), has its audience cringing at the thought of what could possibly happen next.

It is funny, silly, and totally absurd. Just sit back. Relax. Release your inhibitions. You're in for a total mind-fisting.