Patrick Lynn and Sebastian Ley in 638 Ways To Kill Casto, Vault Theatre at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo by Spenser Kells.

638 Ways To Kill Castro (Stage 3, Nancy Power Theatre at the Roxy)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

As a source of absurdity in the world, there might actually be a rich, limitless, renewable repository in … reality. And this smart and very funny satire by Sebastian Ley knows exactly how to mine it for comic gold. Which is to say, with a straight face, characters with no sense of humour, and grave commitment.

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Absurdity pertaining to government and politics is particularly high-yield (and rare to find at the Fringe). It’s the early 70s, and despite a decade and a half of single-minded and, it must be said creative, attention to the subject (code name Operation Mongoose), the CIA has still not succeeded in assassinating Castro. How hard can it be? The title of the play is, hilariously, no joke. [Note to skeptical readers: these are historically true, look it up.]

It’s not for want of trying, as we learn in 638 Ways To Kill Castro. The “ways” are all tailored to what the spy elite of the mighty American military-industrial complex have discovered to be favourite Castro activities: exploding cigars, diving suits laced with botulism, poisoned conch shells…. They’ve even tried to hire a little Cuban kid to pretend to be Castro’s bastard son and assassinate him. Foiled again: they’ve come up against “terrible Cuban child labour laws, “terrible because they exist,” as Goldwater (David Ley) points out with a calm, dry deadpan.

638 Ways To Kill Castro, Vault Theatre at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo by Spenser Kells.

As the play opens, the Operation Mongoose office is getting desperate for results. The CIA bureaucracy is on them to produce. Ominously, an ambitious newcomer Vandenberg (Patrick Lynn) has arrived from the finance office to oversee their accounting, and an official review is imminent. The ass-covering has already started. Is their a pinko in their midst?

Vandenberg gets introduced to the team led by Trench (playwright Ley), in charge of brainstorming new ideas and desperate to impress his dad, a CIA bigwig. Of the office workies, David Ley is the unfaze-able World War II vet, a career 9 to 5-er always on the phone to the New York or the Cuban office. Assassination? A job. With a pension. “A few gunshots never hurt anyone,” he says when yet another device dreamed up by gadget guy Pope (Samuel Bronson), misfires in the office. You’ll laugh out loud to overhear a phone call to Haven with further instructions about an exploding pen.

This succession of failures, too outlandish in a Dr. Strangelove way not to be true, continues as human tensions roil and boil in the workplace. Surprises ensue, some of them pertaining Pope’s growing awareness that he might have psychic powers.

The working-out of this intricate dark comedy has one or two brief moments when the satire briefly sidesteps its own logic. But it’s an accomplished piece of work, fun for the audience with its engaging mix of scenes for two, three, all four. Playwright Ley has a sharp eye for period detail, and ear for dialogue, and there are performances to match in Kathleen Weiss’s Vault Theatre production. It’s full of pauses that are zingers in themselves.

This is a show to seek out. Avoid assassinating for a ticket, or at least cover your tracks.