Humour Me At Here For Now Theatre
Humour Me by Beverley Cooper, the amiable bit of fluff currently at Here For Now Theatre, works yet another variation on the time worn theme of two damaged souls who slowly discover they were meant for each other. For me, at least, it didn’t quite work.
Evalyn (Martha Farrell) is a “teacher” (a college professor of marine biology we later learn) who has lost the ability to laugh. She enrolls in a study being conducted by Leo (Gregory Prest), a neuropsychologist “inches away” from his PhD, to nail down precisely which area of the brain is triggered by humour.
Evalyn’s condition seems to be a hard case. The jokes Leo tries out on her meet with stony silence. In her defence, I didn’t find most of them very funny either.
Of course, Humour Me is concerned with more that what goes on in the prefrontal lobe and the amygdala. It soon emerges that Leo has, shall we say, issues of his own. He is a mass of neuroses, eight years into a relationship with a “fiancée”about whom he is ambivalent to say the least, and possessed of minimal interpersonal skills. This last failing is amply demonstrated when an attempt to surprise Evalyn with a tickle is misinterpreted as sexual assault.
Cooper has some fun teasing out the relationship between these two mismatched souls, but I had trouble buying the inevitable happy ending. Evalyn, whatever might be causing her anhedonia, struck me as far too together to be attracted, except in a sisterly way, to the bag of insecurities that is Leo.
Fortunately, Humour Me is getting the kind of crackerjack production you can rely on at Here For Now. Farrell and Prest turn in polished performances under the direction of old pro Miles Potter. Prest gets funnier the more he decompensates as his professional and personal lives implode.
Set designer Freddy Van Camp has provided a just-so set for Here For Now’s black box space. Ditto for the costumes by Rebecca Chaiken. And I continue to be impressed by the way Louise Guinand’s lighting creates intimate spaces that perfectly capture key moments in the action.
Humour Me continues at Here For Now Theatre through July 26, 2025. For more information and to purchase tickets visit the Here For Now website.
(image: Here For Now Theatre. Art by Mark Uhre.)
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