THEATRE REVIEW

MARCH 2026 | Volume 261

 

Marlene Ginader’s new one-woman show is a satirical amalgam with more hits than misses, part experimental avantgarde theatre—a form we rarely see in Vancouver—and part performance art. A showcase for her specific talents as a writer, thinker, actor, musician and dancer, it’s less concerned with gender and race than the promotional material suggests.

Like Mitch & Murray’s recent production of Harm, Canadian Psycho dramatizes one woman’s obsession in a world of digital images. “Marlene” is obsessed with serial killers and the fact that they are nearly all—at least all who attain celebrity status—white men. She dredges up some little-known examples of women, but mostly wonders if she herself, neither entirely white nor a man, might have the right stuff to become a serial killer.

“We need representation,” she insists. “I never saw anyone who looks like me go on a mass killing.”She takes a (too long, not very funny) serial killer aptitude test and is told—and later sings—"You Don’t Have What It Takes.”

Marlene shares her thing for serial killers with her AI therapist, one of many projectionsGinader has co-designed with Andie Lloyd on Ryan Cormack’s white geometric set, with shelves and costume drawers and doodads that pop out at all angles. The therapist, with her awkward female persona and mechanical vocal delivery (uncredited), is inadvertently hilarious, a sly comment on the ubiquitous Artificial Intelligence phenomenon. We learn how AI is deeply embedded in our culture: in music (Al Green), in environmentalism (AI Gore).

Also projected are photos and videos of the Jeffrey Dahmers and Jack the Rippers. Ginader does some quick changes (a wig, a jacket) to become a couple of other female characters who collaborate in her serial killer fetish.

This is all amusing, and under Jenna Rodgers’ direction Ginader moves through the various segments at a fairly frantic pace. But things get really interesting when she steps away from the psycho satire into the performance art.

In one sequence she talks about a rodent in her kitchen, then shifts into a kind of orchestrated high-speed mime, as if she were preparing it for dinner, cutting and chopping in perfect synchrony with June Hsu’s vivid sound design. In another she paints a keyboard and “plays” her own composition both live and on the video screen while singing along.

In my favourite segments she dances Charles Manson, echoing his exact movements that we watch in a speeded-up video projection. Then there is the brilliant, absurd stoat dance. After celebrating the stoat as an animal that kills not just for food—nature’s very own serial killer—Marlene dons a stoat costume and mask to perform a frantic, mesmerizing dance routine. Credit Amanda Testini’s choreography and Ginader’s skill, grace, endless energy and general nuttiness.

She may not Have What It Takes to kill humans, but artistically this show definitely kills.

 

 

 

 

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