By Shaharah Gaznabbi | 7 July 2024

★★★★

Poignant, fast-paced, and precise. Patty Picker is a smart, sharp, and satirically teeny depiction of what it means to deal with a terrible, uncontrollable secret as an overachieving highschooler. 

Alliteration and carefully crafted poetics makes playwright Evan Bawtinheimer (making his TeenFest Toronto Fringe debut) a writer to watch, employing clever wordplay with deadpan yet colourful hilarity. In fact, as an extra challenge, try to count all the P’s you hear in the show!

The two performers in this piece further elevated the wacky nature of the text through their dynamic, strong, comedic performances. The chemistry between Anne Van Leeuwen and Kaitlin Race was electric. I could watch them perform together for hours. Cultivated & directed by Cass Van Wyck, the choreographed chaos that ensued onstage was gratifying.

Van Leeuwen had the deft ability to mould into an array of characters that were each grounded as they were goofy, each more so than the next. Not only did these depictions live within her physicalisations of the characters, but were portrayed throughout the performance with the swapping of costume pieces reminiscent of a sleight-of-hand magician. A standout character she portrayed was Patty’s awkward dad, leading to a particular (palatably dirty) moment that made me, as well as most of the audience, keel over with laughter. 

Race’s performance of Patty, a 16-year-old wrestling with this self-narrated crisis (resembling the 4th wall-breaking style of Fleabag), was full of heart. The way she painted her lively, animated world in front of us was incredibly engaging. Race’s storytelling ability is undeniable. I specifically want to make mention of the clarity and power that Race had in her movement-based sections throughout the show. Her physical storytelling ability was incredibly delightful as much as it was hard-hitting. 

I found the show’s culminating “teachable moment” between Patty and her Dad to be slow compared to the fast-paced rollercoaster I was riding until this point. As an audience member, I had to adjust down to a different wavelength than the one I had been buzzing at. It was done with the absence of hilarity and the clever wordplay which my brain had been geared into. Instead, it forefronted all the information connected to the main message which unfortunately made this section feel long and harder to follow in comparison to the rest of the play. 

Though, with that said, this show was wholeheartedly relatable, especially as someone with Tourette Syndrome. Her urges to pick her nose felt like the premonitory urges of tics, and the fact that it gets worse when she's stressed or nervous is exactly my experience too. I was Patty when I, myself, was an overachieving highschooler. What the play portrayed so well was the heartbreak of Patty being so open about everything else in her life (being queer, her family life), but feeling so judged and isolated for this one behaviour. That is what resonated with me most. 

You are guaranteed to get a kick out of this show! Unless you are a civics teacher…