Review: It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine.
Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 1:16AM 
If you’re looking for an original, controversial, and thought-provoking night of entertainment, then you can’t let this wonderfully bizarre show pass you by. Full of risqué material that leaves your mouth hanging open while your brain decides whether to laugh or cringe, this solo act will not disappoint.
Crispin Hellion Glover is best known for his acting roles, and most of you probably remember him best as Marty McFly’s father in Back to the Future. I loved him in that role, in which he played a delightfully awkward and quirky character that I doubt is far from his true personality. Other brilliant performances he’s given us are What’s Eating Gilbert Grape?, Dead Man, and Willard.
Crispin’s one hour show It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine. is the second instalment in a three part show. I was only able to catch this one while he was at the Mayfair Theatre last month (check out this great review of the Mayfair at Alexander Irving's Blog), but after seeing it I know I will not be able to rest until I see this show in its entirety. The first segment is titled What Is It? and includes a film he directed with a cast consisting of people with Down’s Syndrome. The final piece in the montage is Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Slide Show, which is a one-hour narration of illustrations from his books.
The It Is Fine! Everything Is Fine show is a surreal experience, and not for the faint of heart. Crispin delivers his monologue with such passion and authority, his voice hushing to the nearly inaudible one minute and then booming off the walls of the theatre the next. His performance is energetic and his enthusiasm infectious. He gets you excited about the slides on the screen, even when they are graphic illustrations of early human surgeries. Many of the slides are of old Victorian books in which he’s blacked out words and added his own narration. Some are hilarious, others disturbing, and a few downright baffling. But they all make you think. That’s the message I left with; it’s always better to do something unpopular or unfavourable and make people question what is right and wrong, than it is to do what is easy and socially acceptable (and lucrative). It’s when that questioning stops that we are in danger as a society.
The title of the show is also the title of the feature film presented at the end of the show. The film was written by Steven C. Stewart, who had cerebral palsy and passed away of complications a month after filming wrapped. Crispin tried to express to us how much he wishes Steven could’ve lived to see his work, and message, carried out into the world. The film is about a man with cerebral palsy, who lives in a hospital where he is always misunderstood (people with cerebral palsy have varying degrees of speech impediments, although if you just try and are patient you can almost always understand). He begins to meet women at the hospital, beautiful women with long hair, all of whom understand perfectly. The film does not, however, have a happy ending. More than anything, Stewart wanted the world to realize that people with disabilities are not only as kind and sensitive as the rest of us, but that they can be equally as dark and disturbed. They are people with disabilities, not disabled people. They are people first.
So if you can stomach a little grotesquerie and face a few unsettling social concepts, I can’t think of a better way to spend a Friday evening. Tickets were only $20, with a discount for attending all three shows.
Reader Comments (2)
Sounds like a good film, I will try to see it some time. Marty McFly and Gilbert Grape - there's a trip down memory lane!
Sarah, thanks for being the first in class to link a fellow student's blog - awesome!
You're welcome, Moira!