Christine Lesiak and Louise Casemore, The Lost Sock Rescue Society, Small Matters Productions. Photo supplied.
The Lost Sock Rescue Society (Stage 28, Roots on Whyte)
By Liz Nicholls, .ca
In this nutty and inspired latest from the physical comedy and clown company Small Matters Productions (For Science!, The Spinsters), we’re at a volunteer recruitment session held by a society devoted to a worthy cause.
The raison d’être of the Lost Sock Rescue Society is to address the sadly neglected plight of the single sock, marginalized and often abandoned in a world of matched pairs. We meet a pair of activists at least as mismatched as any of their rescue socks. The righteous 30-year veteran Sandra ( Christine Lesiak) and smartie community college intern Sabrina (Louise Casemore) are on a mission: to recover, rehabilitate and re-home, to find “Forever Foot Friends,” for lost and wanted socks, orphans and the newly single alike. Not just any home, of course, as Sandra reminds us: potential adoptees must be screened — for reliability, laundry habits, views on disposability, etc. And as for the demeaning practice of sock puppetry … don’t get them started.
We arrive as they’re setting up their single-sock display — all socks are named and tagged — assisted by an IST (“international sock technician”), a different guest at every performance. And part of the fun is the amateur bustle at work. “You’re welcome to visit with the socks and take pictures with them!” beams Sandra, the more excitable of the two. At the performance I saw, people from the crowd lined up to do just that. It’s that kind of show.
Gradually, a classic clown dynamic emerges. Sandra, who bounces on her runners (even her hairdo seems to be on springs) as she trots through the crowd, is the voice of experience and a veritable repository of positivity. And she’s a natural-born A-type upstager. Sabrina, the upstart newcomer whose college practicum is in community leadership, has been studying the “input data.” And she has prepared an earnestly collegiate “society modernization program” as her class project. Her slide show, including testimonials, and subjects like “tools for recruitment” (led by “Guilt”and“Shame”), is a hoot.
There’s an impressive kind of kooky single-mindedness and comic commitment at work. And, as the session goes increasingly haywire, it’s hilariously involving. Lesiak and Casemore, both quick on the uptake, are fully at ease interacting with the audience; it’s the most fun you’ll ever have participating. And they’re unafraid to push their whimsical premise and set-up into a slightly riskier zone, a comic resolution with funny and surprising layers that takes chances with the audience buy-in — and gets its rewards.
Hey, sock symmetry is out, people. In case you’ve been shirking your social responsibilities (or wearing flip-flops all the time), it’s time for some, er, sole-searching.
