By Todd Babiak
Edmonton Journal, August 15, 2004, page B3

All odds are against The Reefer Man.

One-man message plays, no matter how noble the message, often make the audience anxious for the ultra-earnest performer. There he is, attempting to meld art and politics in a way that doesn't make everyone in the theatre feel like busting for othe exits and a stiff drink. There he is, nearly always failing.

Then Russell Bennett, an intelligent and well-spoken young writer and actor from Toronto, needlessly compounds these challenges. He invites audience participation in the first five minutes of the play, thereby ensuring that three women in the front row will not shut up for the duration.

Yet somehow, The Reefer Man prevails.

Bennett, playing young bankruptcy lawyer and marijuana enthusiast Charlie Kovacs, mixes the strains of his Jewish upbringing with a passionate story-as-argument in favour of freeing the weed. Even though some of the audience giggles every time he uses the word marijuana, The Reefer Man rises above the usual Cheech and Chongification of hemp on stage. Kovacs isn't your stereotypical stoner. He's a brilliant young man, completely shaken by the fact that he's been arrested and charged according to an inexplicable and frankly stupid crime.

Kovacs summons the spirits of William Lyon MacKenzie King and Emily Murphy to assert Canada's drug laws were first written by buffoons and racists. He streaks across the stage to evade the heat. He even find a positive argument for the short term memory loss that comes with THC.

In 2004, at the Fringe, Bennett isn't likely to face any ideological opposition. But some of The Reefer Man's best moments come when he's channelling Charlie's mother, who doesn't want him dating a Chinese girl. "A bird may love a fish," Bennett tells us, as Mrs. Kovacs, "but where would they live?"