Crusade for organic legitimacy comes to the stage   

By The Holland Times Thursday 24 September 2009, 15:09

To Bio or Not to Bio

Theatre

Sensenom Productions is an Amsterdam-based, environmentally aware, theatre and film group. Their latest, salad-infused offering, To Bio or Not To Bio, recently played at The Nieuwe Anita as part of Amsterdam's Fringe Festival.

Written and directed by Aida Rodriguez, To Bio or Not To Bio is the story of upwardly mobile couple Percy and Luisa, who take on Goliath food modifiers Monsanto against claims of patent infringement. Trading in their urban yuppie lifestyle for the country farm, Percy and Luisa unwittingly find themselves defenceless against corporate greed and legal manipulation.

Presented in English, and based on a true story, Percy and Luisa's energetic and amusing plight was cleverly told through live performance and audio-visual presentations, positing the protagonists as optimistically naïve, new-age hippies who are soon transformed into politically savvy underdogs.

Aida Mussach as Luisa gave the play a free-flowing enthusiasm that boded well for comedy and young love, while Ben Silburn as Percy carried moments of erstwhile dramatic gravitas. Unfortunately, Mussach's obvious limitations with spoken English made her dialogue hard to comprehend at times.

Unabashed laughs abounded throughout, in particular during scene-stealing turns from Kate Fraser as Percy's Skype-obssessed mother, Nicole Mischler as the sexually deviant Organic Administrator, and Rob Ben Zeev as the domineering baritoned judge. The highly entertaining audio-visual and musical components clearly benefited from extra production time, their succinct and precise editing providing much of the play's narrative direction.This, however, somewhat accentuated the lack thereof in the improvised live performance which at times lacked cohesion and drew unwanted attention upon its own creation.

However, little details - such as a young man emerging from Percy's mother's shower during a Skype conversation - displayed a  finely tuned understanding of characterisation and comedic timing. An intimate setting and moments of crowd participation provided for an enthusiastic piece of local theatre that makes one think twice about where your bread and cereal comes from.

http://www.sensenomproductions.blogspot.com/