In her solo bouffon show, Sabrina Wenske looks fantastic. Playing Baba Yaga, the witch of Slavic folklore, she wears an enormous straw headdress, and her painted-on moles are ghoulish blue. Her abundant energy is wicked and promises danger. “You are so cute with your little laughs”, she gurgles to the audience as if she can almost taste us. “Wow.” As this Baba Yaga prepares a brew made of Karens’ tears, she takes on multiple personas, but a problem soon emerges: at least as the stereotype is presented here, it’s too easy to feel superior to Karens, who are the symbols of white privilege and fragility, so the satire doesn’t have much bite. The online Karen who insists she’s had several past lives, including two as Black women and therefor claims “117 years of racial justice experience”, another woman who mistakes a Black guy who’s fucking her at a sex party for another Black guy she has sex with regularly at these events — and then blames the confusion on him: I don’t feel implicated by these premises, at least not in ways that I haven’t already considered. So, even though this show’s concerns with colonialism, racism, and so on are important and legitimate, the tone of How To Catch a Karen often feels more sanctimonious than revelatory or uncomfortable. There is one exception: in a passage about an imaginary TV show called Immigrant Family Feud, one of the characters says something shockingly racist and, in a breathtakingly metatheatrical moment, Wenske turns the spotlight on herself. But that’s followed by the dullest stretch of all, a series of interviews in which representatives of commerce and academia try to justify racist behaviours using virtually identical arguments. Although it begins with great promise, How To Catch a Karen repeats itself and, because it’s poorly structured, it doesn’t know how to end.
At the Vancouver Fringe Festival. Remaining performances at The Revue Stage: September 11, 5:00 pm; September 12, 8:30 pm; September 14, 7:40 pm. Tickets
(Photo by Reese Brindisi)
I do agree with your description of sanctimonious, and it was pretty much how I felt throughout the later half of the show. For a moment, I couldn’t tell if the spotlight grabbing moment and the abrupt statement “…I will not apologize…you can walk out now” was from the actress or from the character. It somehow echoes my one perception for Karens, that they are fragile and they can’t get too real with their self-criticism.
Among all her Karen searching stories, the questions raised were more predictable than provocative. So, in the end, I can’t help but see this entire viewing as a Karen Catching experience