Killing Time: A Game Show Musical at Mixtape Projects

Photo by Stefi Kopp

NOTE: This was a “partially masked” preview performance.

Mixtape Project’s three word slogan? “Unapologetically fun theatre”. Their newest project, Killing Time: A Game Show Musical, which runs this weekend at the University of Toronto’s Helen Gardiner Phelan Playhouse before heading off to the Hamilton Fringe, seems like it was created with that mantra constantly in mind.

The original musical was (mostly) created by a team of recent Toronto Metropolitan University grads, and the whole affair is imbued with their youthful energy: over its eighty minute runtime, Killing Time doesn’t slow down once. Instead, we get a farcical, high-octane satire of a game show — the titular “Killing Time” — which quickly gives way to a similarly manic satire of a murder mystery. Accordingly, the stereotypical gameshow character types — the host, the guest, etc. — get to interact with the stereotypical murder mystery character character types of the detective and the bumbling cop.

I will say I do find the idea of parodying a game show to be more productive than parodying a murder mystery, if only for the reason that murder mysteries are so often parodied that it can be easy to lose the thread of where the parody begins and ends. Likewise, the first fifteen minutes of Killing Time, which quite inventively parody a game show, were, for me, a little deflated by the initial introduction of the murder mystery.

But Killing Time is at its best when it manages to parody these two genres at the same time — and it does this quite a lot, especially near the end. Indeed, Killing Time’s sometimes frames itself self-reflexively, and implies that everything we are watching — including, naturally, the murder mystery — is part of the titular game show. And, helpfully, it leaves this framing largely unresolved: just as we’re not sure where the murder mystery begins and ends, we’re not sure where “Killing Time” begins and ends.

Technically, Killing Time is far crisper than I could have ever hoped for — stage manager Taylor Young nails hundreds of fast-paced cues, and the performers keep up with the difficult music, which rarely stops for more than a page of dialogue; as Detective Madeleine Murphy, Holly Scott-Black had a patter song towards the end that had me gasping for air just watching.

But, uh, yeah. As promised, Killing Time is loads of fun. It will undoubtedly be a massive hit at the Hamilton Fringe.

Runs ‘til May 7. But it’s pretty much sold out.