Exploding cat takes centre stage in gory Ottawa play

[struggle4progress]

Last Updated: Friday, January 9, 2009 | 4:43 PM ET
CBC News

A cat explodes, brains are blown out, corpses are butchered and blood gushes each night at Ottawa's Gladstone Theatre during much of January.

The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which opened Wednesday, is billed as a Tony Award-nominated black comedy, but each performance leaves the stage soaking red.

Director John P. Kelly said the "feast of violence" is meant to communicate with the audience.

"What the play says is, 'What's it all about?' And it's about nothing. All the killing is for nothing, and that's what the message of the play is" ...

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2009/01/09/ot-090109-bloody-play.html?ref=rss

[Redstone]

1. I don't need to click on the link; that sounds just fucking disgusting. This is ART?

Redstone

[surrealAmerican]

2. It's comedy.

Those wacky Canadians.

[Withywindle]

3. I read the article - it's faked.

Sensationalist headline. Sounds like no actual cats are harmed.

Still doesn't sound like my idea of a good time.

[Deja Q]

5. Thank goodness. But when it comes to black comedy, why oh why can't people

just watch "Death Becomes her"?

Bloody hilarious movie, that...

[struggle4progress]

6. Aside from a picture of a couple of guys dressed as butchers playing with severed human limbs

there isn't much offensive at the newspaper site, at which you would have learned that the theatre installed a garden sprinkler to disperse quickly the mixture of chocolate syrup, ketchup, corn syrup, red food colouring, and glycerine necessary create the desired gory effects. I suppose the nightly clean-up is substantial

Perhaps I'm more jaded than you, as my reaction is not so much that the gory production sounds like an outrage but more that it sounds somewhat unnecessarily excessive and hence boring, so I wouldn't go to see it. But perhaps your reaction is more appropriate than mine

[leftyclimber]

7. They must need a power washer on standby.

It's probably one of those plays where you laugh because it's so awful, while at the same time thinking, "Why the hell am I laughing at this?"

[JVS]

4. Someone has got to score tickets to this for the but tutcher!