The Toronto Fringe Theatre Review: The Lost Scribe Collective’s My Pet Lizard, Liz: The Shakespearean Existential Crisis that Led to His Ultimate Demise
By Ross
“Puppets and adult themes, what could be better?” writer and performer Shaharah “Gaz” Gaznabbi asks her enraptured audience, as The Lost Scribe Collective‘s one-person, musical comedy, puppet show gets underway. Filled to overflowing with complex whimsy and emotional weight, My Pet Lizard, Liz: The Shakespearean Existential Crisis that Led to His Ultimate Demise is as creative as one can imagine, from the long-winded electrofying title through to the ending of this not-so-typical solo-show. Running a quick 60 minutes, Gaz dives in with energy, flying around the grief and pain of losing their best friend and pet lizard, Liz, to distraught trauma. It’s a captivating dive into acute depression and frustration, centered around art, aloneness, and absolution, that feels pure, profound, honest, and authentically complex. And very, very fresh.
My Pet Lizard, Liz… is an absolute wonder of complex trauma, mental health issues, and inventive abstractionisms, shifting comically and heavily between the words of Shakespeare and his Hamlet, who Gaz basically holds responsible for the untimely death of lizard Liz. “Shakespeare. That blasted balding bisexual,” “I blame him,” Gaz states, quite clearly, between a peppy song and dance about death and audition monologues from the indecisive Hamlet for, of all things, the New Burbage Festival, the famed (but not-quite-real) Shakespeare Festival plucked from one of my all-time favorite television series, “Slings and Arrows“.
Everything about the theatre industry and its creative process is thrown into the mix as My Pet Lizard, Liz… runs itself around the art of theatre making and emotional connections, basking in the light of acceptance, denial, avoidance, and outright rejection. Gaz delivers the personal piece effectively and with great care, from each quality character to the accents that lend quaint and specific themes to the puppets that come alive in Gaz’s framings, accompanied by some connecting music from local Toronto artists, which grounds the grieving process in authenticity and emotional enlightenment. This show is a compelling reminder that even in grief, humor and hope can emerge, offering a cathartic journey that lingers long after the final curtain.
