Delirium – Barbara Dooley, Fringe Reviewer

Brooklyn-based storyteller Martin Dockery tells tales of the everyday life of a millennial Everyman.In this set of three stories, filmed on the last day of the Edmonton, Canada Fringe, he regales us with the story of his cross-border romance with his Canadian girlfriend, takes us to Burning Man and the intersection of creativity and death, and connects a gift from his grandfather to the life cycle of monarch butterflies and the birth of his child.

Dockery’s extemporaneous delivery draws his audience in–he could be at his favorite corner bar talking to his buddies–though now and then his pacing is a bit off as he waits for a reaction from his listeners.The stories are genuine and heartfelt, with flashes of humor, amazement, and insights into our common human condition.

But for this reviewer, Dockery is a voice from the antepandemic past, a time when borders, scary as that might be, were open, when thousands of people could mingle in the desert in an exercise of creativity and sharing, and when terrorism on planes was mostly theoretical and not from an unmasked seatmate. I watched with yearning and a sense of nostalgia.