Review: blink blink blink (Wildside)

Let Sarah Tonin grab your fears by the balls.
It displays the aplomb that Fringe-style performances can develop with time and repetition. 
by Nanette Soucy

The plucky motivational speaker's book, Skin the Bunny: An Aggressive Approach to Reclaiming Your Life is condensed for your edification into an animated workshop, presented in an exceptionally catered Hotel Conference Room near you, on the occasion of the Centaur's 15th annual WildSide Festival.


Relying heavily on Rasmussen's impressive physicality, punch lines are delivered with a swift flick of the wrist, and snappy improvisation by a performer that is heartily in her groove.

Sarah Tonin's story has been well honed before audiences across Canada, and this presentation at WildSide displays the aplomb that Fringe-style performances can develop with time and repetition. Sometimes at risk of being a little too comfortable in her role, Kirsten Rasmussen, darling of the Montreal Improv scene still manages to keep her performance and delivery fresh and cool through five separate showings in Montreal and the Prairies.

Firmly in possession of the audience-appreciation carrot that dangles before every performer, it remains important for Rasmussen not to stuff herself to satiety on this tasty root, in the interest of staying hungry and keeping her act crisp.

Ms. Tonin delivers her theories on kicking ass with the breakneck energy and precision of a seasoned veteran of the soapbox. So adept in their roles as Sarah Tonin, and advice-peddler, respectively, Rasmussen and Tonin both could deliver this workshop in their sleep. Relying heavily on Rasmussen's impressive physicality, punch lines are delivered with a swift flick of the wrist, and snappy improvisation by a performer that is heartily in her groove.

Far more interesting than the platitudinous dispensation of personal affirmation, are the glimpses we get of life outside the conference room. In her car, her hotel room, on the phone with her sister, we get a window into the troubled inner workings of the familial drama-avoiding, dissociative bunny-hopping and emotional car-wreck of a life that Sarah Tonin's bellicose approach to self-improvement informs. The layers of the onion that is this self-help guru leave us in tears of laughter and empathy, appetites whet for more.

blink blink blink is at Wildside