Arts & Culture

What: Honey I’m Home
Where: Factory Theatre, 125 Bathurst St.
When: Now, until Sun., Dec. 1
Highlight: André du Toit’s excellent, highly theatrical lighting
Rating: NNNNN (out of 5)
Why you should go: The potent, 65-minute production feels genuinely deserving of the overused adjective “experimental.”

IT’S NOT UNCOMMON  for contemporary technology’s malicious underbelly to attract the attention of artists in search of new approaches to horror, with We’re All Going to the World’s Fair filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun coming to mind as a particularly prominent practitioner of this blooming subgenre. Still, in my experience, it remains rare for a project to succeed in translating this tantalizing subject matter into a fresh, specific aesthetic. In this regard, Lester Trips (Theatre)’s Honey I’m Home, now playing in the Factory Theatre Studio, is a galvanizing anomaly.

Created and performed by Lauren Gillis and Alaine Hutton (with a few appearances by dancer Angela Blumberg), the potent production feels genuinely deserving of the overused adjective “experimental.” An anti-capitalist fable that seems to take inspiration from the disturbing realm of creepypasta, the show tracks a week in the life of Janine, an ordinary worker stuck in a depressive funk.

After struggling to stay awake at her dull, nondescript office job, Janine often stumbles home too burnt out to even do the dishes, never mind completing the three-factor authentication login process necessitated by her online debt portal. Though her boss insists she keep coming into the office (unlike the rest of the company), he also lets her visit her house as a digital avatar, thanks to a glitchy program that often leaves her nauseous, scrambling back to her desk.

André du Toit’s excellent, highly theatrical lighting doesn’t just clearly signpost the transitions between Honey I’m Home’s physical and digital realms — it’s key in defining the atmosphere (Gillis and Hutton’s set is minimal). To represent Janine at work, Gillis hangs horizontally over a couple of knocked-over chairs as light emanates from the floor, illuminating her face in a manner that evokes a computer screen. The world around her is a void; because her job has taken over her life to such an extent, it’s the only thing the audience gets to see. On the other side of the spectrum, Janine’s head-only AI avatar, played by Hutton, appears in extremely bright lighting, capturing the overstimulating nature of her digital environment. And as the piece heads toward its guttural climax, du Toit unleashes further excitements, including a couple of sequences featuring strobes.

Gillis’s and Hutton’s performances match the design in rigour. They define each of their multiple characters through impressively committed physical choices, with Janine’s character mutating depending on location: at work, Gillis perma-slumps; at home, she stumbles around dazedly; and, as her full-body AI self, she swings her arms mechanically, like a cheerful video game NPC.

My only semi-quibble about Honey I’m Home is its 65-minute length — it’s so good that I didn’t want it to end! Hopefully, Lester Trips will be able to find the resources to make their proactive, technically precise work at an even bigger scale in the future, if they so desire. I can’t wait for whatever they cook up next.