Alex: Dead Metaphor ‘insightful’

A new play has opened in Toronto called Dead Metaphor.

It’s a comedy drama that focuses on a war hero whose skill-set isn’t in demand once he returns home. In this pitch-black farce, Dean, a battle-scarred sniper returned from Afghanistan, realizes his killing skill doesn’t easily translate into a job.

When hired then fired as a flunky for a scheming politician, Dean’s cynical dying father, played by Eric Peterson, gets fired up. “This allows for comic possibilities because this is a comedy, and a very dark one of course, a black one.”

“This character is, to a certain extent stressed by how the world has changed in his lifetime, which I think is a very common experience as we grow old.”

Bristling with corrosive language Dead Metaphor is an insightful drama shattering the funny bone, and playing on emotions.

Writer/director George F Walker has given us a hero who comes home but is not a hero in his own mind. “You look out there and you see these guys, and they don’t look like, not wearing headbands with hero on them, it just comes down to what you’ve do and you’ve been away and what’s it mean.

“When you’re coming back it doesn’t, you know life doesn’t continue, it starts again.”

Dead Metaphor is running at Toronto’s Panasonic Theatre through June 8th.