Cathedral City is a spare one-man show by the likeable Kurt Fitzpatrick. Fringe veterans might remember him from Bromance, performed at the 2014 Fringe line-up announcement party with Tommy Nugent (aka Reverend Nuge).
With no props or set except a single chair, Fitzpatrick maps out a trippy personal narrative that centers around a recent time when he endured six months of crippling back pain. To cope, he took loads of painkillers and watched his favorite old movies. Stephen King’s cult favorite Creepshow wormed into Fitzpatrick’s brain and became seminal to Fitzpatrick’s pain-tormented worldview. There are rapid-fire references to
Schrödinger’s cat (thought experiment that suggests you can be dead and alive) and Skinner’s daughter (was she a lab rat?) and paradox. There is a girl who makes a sand castle on a man’s head; he becomes a work of art.
What?
Yes. It is kind of confusing. This is by no means a perfect piece of theater. Sometimes I strained to see with low light levels; sometimes I strained to comprehend what was being mapped out for me. Yet I worked to understand it. I didn’t check out. There is something about Cathedral City and Fitzpatrick’s earnestness that keeps you wanting. It keeps you thinking.
How many people live in an alternative universe, both dead and alive, waiting out pain and watching hours and days of Netflix? Pain becomes its own world. When you cannot walk erect, you do become a different animal altogether. You construct different stories. This is one of them.
With time to reflect, I can see the elegance of Fitzpatrick’s references. Upon reading the program, I gleaned that when he slows down his often-dizzying, rapid-fire speech, he courts a stutter. Perhaps Cathedral City, like pain, is an echo. It demands reflection, reminding you of its power after you have moved out of its immediate reach.
Read the official 32-page FRINGE FESTIVAL GUIDE here and find the full performance lineup here.
This article appears in May 27 – Jun 2, 2015.