False Profits

Active Salad Productions—School of Contemporary Dancers

As a Millennial with an advanced degree in public administration, I’m an easy mark for an aggressively charismatic and comedic rage against the capitalist hellscape we live in and how we got here. If this is also your jam, you will be highly entertained as Jeff Leard examines how the fossil fuel industry is responsible for much of the world’s past and current problems.

Leard is such a polished performer that the production requires no more than a man in a suit, a single sobering audio excerpt, and a handful of well-timed lighting cues to command the room.

That said, the show is largely preaching to the choir; an audience primed for a skewering of late stage capitalism may not learn much, and someone who does need to hear the message would probably walk out after the first 10 minutes. Because the show likely wouldn’t convince the uninitiated and offers no solutions beyond a rather silly, if not outrageously sexy, leftist fantasy played for laughs, the ending feels like it’s grasping for vague emotional straws to make us all feel a little better about something we can’t really do anything about. Still, False Profits is a compelling showcase for a magnetic performer with a clear point of view.

Ashley Frantik