Throne Life

The Electronic Gospel Experience—The Rachel Browne Theatre

If you were forced to either undergo a proctologic examination or sit through this “show,” you should choose the former. Yes, I would rather have things stuck up my butt than have to go through this again.

I hate writing bad reviews for a number of reasons. First and foremost, most actors try, and they try hard to produce something that everyone can enjoy. Just because they fall short, I don’t want to bash
them for their earnest efforts. Instead, I try to be constructive; I try my best to offer some advice with every bad review to help the actor(s) improve their show.

Sadly, that does not apply here because Christopher James Van Heyst doesn’t want to put on a good show or entertain you; he has one mandate and it has nothing to do with entertainment.

After the show started, I wondered at about 20 minutes in what I can write. The major problem so far was that he spoke so slowly. This 90-minute outrage could have been shortened to 20 minutes if he spoke at a normal pace. Instead, the entire outing
w………e……..n………t
s………o………m………e………t………h………i………n………g
l………i………k………e
t………h………i………s

Every word was dragged out to take forever to say. I wanted to write something along the lines of, “enunciating a few words slowly emphasises a thought, enunciating everything slowly just becomes tedious.” Afterwards, I realised that he’s doing it to drag this thing intentionally.

About 50 minutes into it, I starting thinking to myself, “Did you ever rehearse this in front of friends or family? Did no one have the nerve to tell you that this stinks?”

An hour into it, I actually felt bad for Van Heyst because people were giggling in the audience. They laughed at him, not with him. I could see people mocking him. Eventually, someone not so discreetly
shook their head and left.

Speaking of audience, there were a total of seven people in this audience, including myself. Of the seven at least three that I could see fell asleep at various times, including the person center-front who
likely and mercifully missed 60 minutes of this disaster.

At 75 minutes in, I understood that this entire outing was his homage to his god and his attempt to recruit us as viewers. Then I got mad. If I want to watch Sunday morning gospel, that’s my choice, but I
want to watch Fringe entertainment. This is the polar opposite of entertaining.

Van Heyst, you are why I went from being an atheist to being an anti-theist. You love your god. I get it and I respect that—but don’t try to recruit me under a guise that I’m at an artistic show; that’s
despicable.

At the end of the debacle, Van Heyst thanked the Fringe for allowing anything, and pretty much
everything goes. He used the Fringe as a medium to spread his word. Under false pretenses of putting on a show, he hijacked the audience’s time to preach the gospel of his god for 90 minutes.

I have seen hundreds of Fringe shows in my reviewing career. Honestly, this was the WORST show I’ve ever seen—and Van Heyst doesn’t care. He got to spread his word, and that’s all he wanted.

If there is a hell, watching this show is it.

Ray Yuen