Advanced Field Zoology for Beginners
Waterfront Theatre: September 8, 10, 13 and 15, 2019
Tickets at vancouverfringe.com or at the door
Posted September 8, 2019
Victoria’s Shawn O’Hara returns to the Vancouver Fringe Festival with a follow-up to Field Zoology 101, a hit at last year’s festival. The new show is not a sequel so don’t worry if you didn’t catch it in 2018. In this solo show, O’Hara takes on the persona of mustachioed Dr. Bradley Gooseberry whose highly suspect PhD was earned online from the University of Arizona. Although he claims to be the best field zoologist this side of “that door” (indicating the entrance to the Waterfront’s seating area), he’s clearly a ninny. He runs through some of the extinctions: the Bengal tiger whose only predator is “free market capitalism”; the sloth; and the African elephant, also known, he says, as the “Dick-faced jungle cow”.
O’Hara punctuates his show with hand-drawn transparencies of the stick-figure variety. Some end up looking a lot like human genitalia.
It comes as no surprise to discover Dr.Gooseberry no longer works at SFU, has no home and is presently living out of his van in Vancouver.
I didn’t see Field Zoology 101 so, just as delusional as Dr. Gooseberry, I thought perhaps O’Hara could make comedy out of our threatened wildlife – but still be hard-hitting. Advanced Field Zoology for Beginners is sort of funny but doesn’t take the opportunity to make the point that species are going extinct while O’Hara is holding forth on stage. What did I expect? Silly me.