The Flying Doctor by Moliere
Written by Moliere
directed by Michael Doliner
FlexCo Theatre
July 2, 2016
Production website

💉💉 out of 5.

I am a baked potato. This is no joke. I am a baked potato. Sometimes you go to theatre just because it is there – and tonight was that night. This production of The Flying Doctor by Moliere was advertised in the smallest of print in the most hidden column of the recent Time Out magazine. It took place in the backroom of a tiny gallery in Chinatown and promised a glass of champaign. I’m in! Arriving to the “theatre” we were taken to the back of the building to a room the size of a small kitchen. There was a large faux mirror taking up the 12” square floor and aluminum foil on EVERY SINGLE SURFACE – every wall, every door, every piece of molding, the ceiling, etc. HENCE – theatre of the baked potato!

The show describes itself as

an explosion of the early Moliere work (The Flying Doctor) in which the piece is performed multiple times (over and over and over) in quick succession. It examines what happens to the actors, the characters, the audience, and even the text itself as each experiences the work and morphs throughout the process – it will never be the same any two nights. There will be live music, champagne, literature, acrobatics, and (of course) a flying doctor.

The show was suprisinigly good fun. The music and the vocal work in the show was particularly good. I was just thinking that all of this good music should add up to a better show outside of the baked potato. There was a lot of audience intereraction (especially in that the theatre had only ONE ROW and the audience of twenty-some filled the “foil”).  However, It was way too pushed and way too big to last the 90 minutes. Slapsticks were going off ever 20 seconds.  Comedy is just not possible without SOME subtlety, and this show had none.

It was funny. I’ll give it that, but I really wanted to learn more about Moliere and especially The Flying Doctor, one of his very first plays. I thought with multiple takes of the story I would really get inside of the playwright – – but they were more assuredly USING the play rather then SERVING the play. It was not solid theatre – but it really was the best time I have known with aluminum