Venue:
Stage 11, Academy at King Edward School

Sat Aug 21 11.30pm
Sun Aug 22 8.15pm

WARNING: This year reviewers don't seem to be able to get away from giving away my material and thus the surprises in the show. Rather than editing the reviews they are here in full but if you haven't seen the show and plan to, I would strongly recommend not finding out what happens before you see it. thanx

Edmonton Journal

Jumpin' Jon Katz is a gas gas gas

Gentle reader, there will be no plot summary for CACTUS. This genuinely strange romp through one man's digressive psychological universe includes a scene with John Lennon and Paul McCartney, a walk through the desert lasting more than "negative seven days," several inexplicable shout-outs to Lost In Translation and, finally, a smatter of crowd surfing.

Jonathan Katz, an Australian who plays everyone and many versions of the narrator, Phil, is slick with sweat less than one minute into CACTUS. By this time, he's well into endeavouring to "pick up" the audience. After we neck with him for a while, Phil begins his walk through the desert with Yuri, a Russian, and Eric, a gay man with a crush on Phil. Yet, somehow, they're all Phil.

It may be his make-out prowess, but Katz seduces the audience early on. At one point, Eric suffers from gas pains in the desert. Of course, he's too bashful to release that which ails him. Yuri realizes that Eric is too neurotic to blow one, but he wishes the fellow would just let it out. An audience member in my vicinty, wholly convinced by the wisdom of CACTUS, did it for him. Ah, the hummus smell of verisimilitude.

Katz isn't for everyone. There isn't much in the way of conflict or drama in CACTUS. At the same time, we don't have to put up with any of the false sounding confessionals or climactic revelations about childhood trauma that pervade the one-hander.

Even though Phil doesn't corral all his different selves into a satisfying conclusion, CACTUS is the sort of play you want to talk - and laugh - about in the beer tent.

****
- Todd Babiak

See Magazine

In his bizarre one-man show, Australian Fringe vet Jonno Katz doesn't just break the fourth wall, he crowd surfs through it. From the moment he slinks on stage sporting a blue suit and a bright red clown nose, shrugs, pulls the nose off and launches into a lightening speed barrage of a monologue, he's got the audience hooked. It isn't long before he shamelessly seduces and, quite literally, makes out with us for a while. And, just when you think the relationship isn't going anywhere, he breaks into "reality," a walk through the desert with a ruskie named Yuri and a lilting flower of a man named Eric. I'm sure the couple in front of me who were practicing the same sloppy kissing motions on each other that Katz's narrator Phil was mimicking weren't part of the play, but perhaps their acting on their drive-in theatre impulses shows just how Katz's manic, psychotic presence flips the traditional theatre atmosphere on its ear.

****

- Ericka Thorkelson

The Edmonton Sun

Desert Trek, dry humour

As schizophrenic as Fight Club and delirious as My Own Private Idaho, this fast-paced one-man - or is it three man? - journey through desert heat will leave you parched from laughter.

From the moment CACTUS's Jonno Katz appears on stage, he makes nice with the audience, slips us the tongue and admits his crush, while counselling us to see other shows 'cause he'll be courting several audiences in the coming days.
He's already drenched in sweat and wearing a red clown's nose. Something's up.
We learn he's Phil's deluded fantasy. Days on end in the desert will do that to you.

Phil snaps out of it, and finds himself in the company of Urie, the Russian compulsive liar, and Eric, who has developed a secret crush on him and plots to confess his love in flaky tormented poetry.

This just reeks, in a good way, of some Monty Python sketch, replete with dry humour, thick accents and a machine-gun fire lineup of jokes.

The unlikely travel companions size each other up, Urie recording his suspicions in a dictaphone, the other two in their travel diaries.

Paranoia, flashbacks and memories of unrequited love ensue in a hilarious, quick-witted and seemless morphing of events and characters. We meet Urie's first love, Emily. Is she the same Emily Phil thinks took his virginity one night seven years ago when they threw a bottle of tequila back together and Phil passed out?

In horror, Phil learns his buddies were lying when they said they saw the two going at it. His love life didn't dry up after Emily he discovers. At 24, he's still the big V. That glistening pool was just a mirage.

Although laughs were steady, as the full house rode the wave of the trio's quirky aimless ponderings and angst, a fart joke took the cake.

Eric ponders in his log what the right amount of time is to wait before breaking wind in front of strangers. Could the others be wondering the same? That is the question.

- Jennifer Parks

Vue Weekly

Australian Jonno Katz takes us on a surrealist journey of three men (?) wandering through the desert, one of them hallucinating that he's a performer in front of an audience. Seamlessly bouncing from character to character - a list which includes Phil the walker/performer, Yuri the Russian, John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and Eric, the uptight one - Katz explores love and expression in a number of forms, even the unrequited love a performer has for his audience. Filled with offbeat wit, CACTUS is wacky and inventive. Jonno Katz could easily become the Spike Jonez of the 21st century.

- WA