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I Love You So Much I Wish You Were Dead

    Written and directed by Brenda McFarlane
    with Jeff Clarke, Deborah DeMille, Brigitte Gall, James Gilpin, and Murray Oliver

    Review by H.J. Kirchoff

    Brenda McFarlane is one of the brightest young writer-directors around these days and I Love You So Much I Wish You Were Dead, a surreal, revue-style look at love and relationships is the sixth for her company Far Fetched Productions, This show which explores precisely the themes expressed in the title, is not especially deep but it does manage to cut close to the bone. In any case, it’s a terrific example of McFarlane’s sharp eye fot the absurdities and petty madnesses of modern life, her distinctively quirky sense of humour and her deft hand at quick-step staging, not to mention her gift for assembling first-rate comic casts. The show opens with The Blonde(Brigitte Gall) in the shower reflecting on what she would do if her partner died: I Imagine what I’d say at his funeral, what I’d wear. Doesn’t every woman look better in black than in white?” It’s all in her imagination, of course, and there is no real plot, but as Gall and Deborah DeMille (The Redhead) play out woes and fantasies against lovers as played by James Gilpin and Jeff Clarke, the play fixes on a direction, and Gall eventually enlists The man in Black (Murray Oliver) for a “hit” — or three.