COCKROACH – REVIEW OF TARRAGON THEATRE PRODUCTION

Reviewed by James Karas

Cockroach is a play Ho Ka Kei (Jeff Ho) playing at the Tarragon Theatre in Toronto. It has three characters, a Bard, a Boy and a Cockroach. The central character is a cockroach, a brilliant, talkative, in-your-face cockroach played with great vigour by Steven Hao. The Bard (Karl Ang) is William Shakespeare or perhaps his ghost, and the Boy is played by Anton Ling. But a play called Cockroach?

Three of Aristophanes plays are called Wasps, Birds and Frogs. The Chorus of Jurors in Wasps are dressed like wasps. In Birds the King of Thrace becomes a bird and a slew of birds appear as silent parts. In Frogs the Chorus is made up of frogs and there is a silent Donkey. Karel and Josef Capek’s The Insect Play depicts much of the insect world from butterflies to beetles, to ants to crickets to flies.

Karl Ang, Steven Hao, and Anton Ling . Photo by Joy von Tiedemann

Which brings us to Ho Ka Kei (Jeff Ho)’s play which bears no similarity and owes nothing to previous plays that have insects or other animals in them. A cockroach is an ancient and almost indestructible insect that costs incalculable amounts of money and effort to eradicate from areas that it invades. In Cockroach it is an arrogant, brilliant insect that has indeed been around from time immemorial and intends to stay here forever. He speaks voluminously about civilization and with William Shakespeare as his opponent he belittles the West and wants us to know that the civilization of the East is preeminent.

The Bard, the quotes Shakespeare, is adept at wordplay and vigorously defends the West as the superior culture and his own influence. I am not sure what the Boy does or what he represents. The play stuffs so much material in its 90 minutes that I found it difficult to follow and with a disgusting insect and Shakespeare pontificating almost ceaselessly I had difficulty concentrating.

Much of the acting tends to the stentorian method of speaking with the Boy being less so but, in the end, I got very little out of the whole thing.

The bravura performances by Hao,  Ang and Lee directed by Mike Payette did not shed enough light or bring coherence to the playwright’s overreaching ambitions.

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Cockroach  by Ho Ka Kei (Jeff Ho) continues until October 9, 2022 at the Tarragon Theatre, 30 Bridgman Ave. Toronto, Ontario.  www.tarragontheatre.com