Toronto Fringe Review: Mail Ordered
The mail-order-bride industry and third-world poverty are nothing to laugh at. But Shanice Stanislaus’s savage satire Mail Ordered is one of the funniest and sharpest fish-out-of-water entertainments since Sacha Baron Cohen waved an American flag as Borat.
Stanislaus plays Lila, who’s dressed in a tacky white bridal dress and waves around a red fan, hoping to find a Canadian husband who can pay $100,000 U.S. (“cash or American Express”) so that her family back in her impoverished Asian village will survive.
Interacting with the audience to get up-to-date promotional photos of herself, she demonstrates her dancing techniques, housekeeping duties and tells a bunch of giraffe jokes. Meanwhile, she suggests a wilder past, back when she may have been involved with someone named Simon and she got into hip-hop music and dancing.
Stanislaus’s persona, complete with malapropisms, is completely endearing, and the actor is a skillful, generous improviser. Director Aaron Coates ensures the shifts in the plot, which include something called a “change of luck ceremony,” feel natural.
By the end, you’ll be rooting for Lila as her knowledge of the world – and her increased self-confidence and agency over her life – expands.
Mail Ordered is on now until July 16 as part of the Toronto Fringe. Tickets and show times here.
Bad Dog received multiple nominations for Holiday! An Improvised Musical and Swordplay: A Play of Swords.