Brain

Rating:

Company:Brendan McLeod, Toronto

Genre:Storytelling

Venue: 17 PTE (Colin Jackson Studio)

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Count on a fringe theatre festival to have a show about a guy who contemplates molesting children.

That's basically what Brendan McLeod's monologue Brain is all about.

• Winnipeg Fringe 2016: read our reviews

It starts pretty generically.McLeod, dressed all in black, even brags that he's been told he's got a generic face, "perfect for commercials." But after he recounts a somewhat ordinary, conservative, God-fearing upbringing in Alberta, he delves into his adult struggles with obsessive compulsive disorder.

[McLeod] speaks so fast and pauses so little that I had a hard time digesting his story and connecting the dots of his fuzzy logic.- Kaj Hasselriis

InMcLeod'scase, it's taken the form of mulling over what it might be like to abuse kids.

McLeod'smain mental problem is that he thinks way too much ("Up here, anything exists, anything is possible"). The problem with Brain is thatMcLeoddoesn't articulate his thinking patterns well enough. He speaks so fast and pauses so little that I had a hard time digesting his story and connecting the dots of his fuzzy logic.

If you want to challenge yourself with a mind bender that tackles a truly fringe topic, you might appreciate Brain more than I did. Just be warned thatMcLeoddoesn't censor the specifics of histransgressivethoughts.