6 days, 100 miles a day = 600 miles from Toronto to Montreal. Perhaps you’ve seen the annual Friends for Life Bike Rally on the canal during Pride Month (August in Montreal). The ride fundraises for key organizations in Toronto, Kingston, and Montreal that help people living with HIV/AIDS. It’s a significant distance for any rider, and certainly a suffer-fest for Mark Keller, a 30-something gay man who finds himself alienated following a diagnosis of HIV. Even participating in the night programming of the ride, notably the candlelit confessional ceremony, seems like a massive hill to surmount. Keller, though, has nowhere to go but forward. The fundraising ride becomes the frame for Keller’s real journey from diagnosis to acceptance of his positive HIV status over a ten year period.
Living with HIV today is not the death sentence it was when AIDS first appeared, but Keller is emblematic of how the stigma persists and manifests today. Beyond his health, he faces many other losses – personal, existential, financial, social – some that come from the diagnosis and some from his responses to it. We see how family, friends, lovers, the health care system, and even society at large can’t show up and it leaves him in an abyss. Life goes on after a positive diagnosis, but as a transformative experience, it’s a major adjustment and not necessarily in the areas one expects. What especially makes the show gripping is Keller’s complicated character; he longs for connection, actively seeks it, but it proves elusive.
This deeply moving show is brilliantly executed with an excellent script and acting. Keller’s ability to capture a full spectrum of emotions is commendable as he switches from despair to enamoured to rage in a gesture or word. Segments from the show capture some of the most creative and best writing and acting I have ever seen on the Fringe stage — cruising at the clinic and the initial diagnosis, attempts to date and disclose his status, and the messy Mark period as Keller hits bottom with drug use. I could go on and on. Equally commendable is the talented Alan Shonfield who takes on every supporting character, lovers, real estate brokers, doctors. He matches every degree of Keller’s emotional fluctuations changes flawlessly. I thought of the famous quote about how Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but backwards and in heels. Director Nick May and stage manager Sofia Di Cicco have made Keller’s story a must see. I was enraptured from beginning to end.
Keller is part of the Friends for Life ride and you can support him HERE. Poz is at the Fringe Festival on June 12, 13, and 14. Tickets for his show can be found HERE. The Montreal Fringe continues until June 15. Tickets for all shows HERE. To see our previous reviews, check out Meat Factory : Mommy, Homecumming, The Routine, Colonial Circus, Jem Rolls Adventures in Canadian Parking Lots (review Levine), Harlem of the North, To Pieces, Jem Rolls Adventures in Canadian Parking Lots (review Fuerst), and A Love Unbecoming.
