By Johnnie Walker

Domestic is an absolutely insane black comedy about a bright-eyed 50s housewife who has to deal with an encyclopedia salesman who keeps dying in her kitchen, pesky phone calls from someone named “God” who keeps talking about the end of the world and her inability to have enough cat food. Also, a pair of fast-talking weirdos with faux British accents (pictured) keep bursting into her home and she may or may not have murdered a homeless man earlier that day. Oh, and her husband shot himself in the head and she just doesn’t seem to have noticed yet.
Somehow, Domestic manages to be screamingly funny and compelling without ever really making a lick of sense. Joel Babcock’s script may have a story that is willfully unintelligible, but it also has searingly witty dialogue that’s as fast-paced as it is insane. The entire cast is impressively solid, but serious kudos need to go out to Carly Hefferman, who really carries the show as homemaker Betty Smith. Her pitch-perfect performance as a sort of psychotic June Cleaver requires her to be on stage and talking, mostly to herself, for almost the entire piece, and she manages to be exciting, funny and surprisingly sympathetic throughout the piece.
Domestic plays today at 2:45 p.m. at the Passe Muraille backspace.
Other Fringe today:
At 3:30 p.m., you can catch Damages, a drama about Holocaust survivors, at the George Ignatieff Theatre. If you’re in the mood for something lighter, there’s always Wild About Harry over at the Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse at 11:00 p.m. It’s a so-called “jazzy musical romp” through the songbook of composer Harry Warren.
Photo by Sarah Munro.