Theatre in Review: Winners and Losers

In Winners and Losers, Marcus Youssef and James Long play a game that they have invented. It has no particular structure or goal, consisting as it does entirely of back-and-forth commentary. That pretty much also describes the play that contains it. Winners and Losers, the game, is the sort of thing that kills time at a particularly slow run-through or rehearsal. (Youssef and Long have long and distinguished resumés in the Canadian theatre, as actors, writers, and heads of theatre companies.) Basically, someone introduces a topic — South Africa, the Occupy movement, and Pamela Anderson are representative examples — and both players weigh in on whether he/she/it is a winner or a loser. It’s little more than a vehicle for them to express their opinions on a variety of subjects and engage in a little verbal fencing. In the right hands, it could have the snap and unexpected hilarity of a great Nichols and May sketch. Whether Youssef and Long are the ideal players of the game they have invented is another question. The first half of this semi-improvised evening consists of halfhearted comments that have the shape of satire without the requisite sting. Long praises microwave ovens, saying, “They’re not dangerous, they’re safe and they’re quick ways for unhealthy British people to cook healthy food for themselves.” Discussing Stephen Hawking, one of them imagines asking the physicist, “What would you prefer, Mr. Hawking? Your legacy? Or your legs?” In the middle of a little tussle about Mexico and the Zapatistas, Youssef, who is of Egyptian ancestry, announces he is an associate member of ISIS, which means he “doesn’t have to go to the beheadings.” Youssef also mentions that he is a member of the leftist political party COPE, which has “more factions than actual members.” Forty minutes or more of this sort of fooling around is far too much; when they get into an argument about who is the better masturbator — well, based on the evidence here, it would seem to be a tie.