Zero a jack-in-the box of smart surprises: Victoria's off-the-wall Atomic Vaudeville scores another wild hit

Vancouver Courier, p. 31,
November 8, 2006
By Jo Ledingham

If you, like character Dr. Roland Whelby in The Qualities of Zero, believe that time plus the expectation of euphoria equals perpetual disappointment, you, too, might use drugs.

Roland is a neuroscientist who, with the help of a bunch of lab rats and beautiful assistant Dr. Rene Metcalfe (who, unlike other assistants he has known, doesn't look like she stores her face "in a jar of formaldehyde at night"), comes up with a formula for, if not happiness, at least the shutting down of what he calls the happy, sad, mad country that is his brain.

But The Qualities of Zero, written by Legoland creator Jacob Richmond of Victoria's Atomic Vaudeville theatre company, will excite only the happy part of your brain. Like Legoland, which was a hit at this year's Fringe Festival, it's off-the-wall creative and jack-in-the-box full of surprises. This is comedie at its noir-est. Roland, being the scientist he is, weighs everything. Death: advantages--environmentally sound; disadvantages--inability to move. Or sex: disadvantages--herpes, pus, babies; advantages--euphoria. And wouldn't you know a moment of sex-induced euphoria wakens

Roland to the possibility of love, nature's own happy-making cure for what ails you.

This sort of mad scientist stuff usually doesn't get me going but Qualities of Zero is so darned smart and so excellently executed I was put into a state of excitement. Minimal staging by Janis Ward--a free-standing door and frame, a table, a chalkboard and a molecular model--with lighting by Jeremy Mac- Leod set an almost comic-book ambience. The cast of six (Richmond, Jeff Gladstone, Rod Peter Jr., Gina McIntosh, Celine Stubel and Michael Delamont (who has a machine gun laugh like actor Jay Brazeau) all "get" the style so there's no jarring performance to throw off the fine balance.

With every theatre company--big and small--wanting your bum in their seat, I'd recommend The Qualities of Zero. Produced by Vancouver Fringe and Atomic Vaudeville and directed by Britt Small, there's nothing like it.