I must con­fess, I’ve always been a fan of Joel Tobeck, so when I saw his name in the cast for ‘I Want To Be Hap­py,’ I was keen to check it out. Cou­pled with the promise of a sur­re­al­ist premise explor­ing the par­al­lel lives of a lab sci­en­tist and his guinea pig, I could­n’t resist attend­ing.

The play bril­liant­ly employs stage design as a nar­ra­tive tool, with the right side of the stage serv­ing as Paul’s (Joel Tobeck) perspective—a ster­ile room dom­i­nat­ed by a small cage. On the left, an over­sized ver­sion of this cage hous­es Binker (Jen­nifer Lud­lum), who scut­tles around a steel-framed enclo­sure, that is not too dis­sim­i­lar from the lab.  This dual per­spec­tive style con­tin­ued into oth­er scenes and sup­port­ed the con­stant inter­play of Paul and Binker’s par­al­lel sto­ry­lines, offer­ing a unique way to expe­ri­ence both per­spec­tives simul­ta­ne­ous­ly. How­ev­er, at times, it proved a tad chal­leng­ing to fol­low dur­ing action sequences.

Jen­nifer Lud­lum’s por­tray­al of Binker is noth­ing short of delight­ful. She embod­ies the ges­tures and poise of a wide-eyed and bewil­dered rodent from the moment she graces the stage. Her twitch­ing nose and dart­ing eyes had the audi­ence in fits of laugh­ter before she even uttered a word.

Jen­nifer­’s depic­tion of ado­ra­tion for her mate, a 6‑foot-tall Guinea Pig named ‘MyOne,’ is utter­ly hilar­i­ous. The play fea­tures many fun moments like this includ­ing the absurd use of elec­tron­ic toy ani­mals dart­ing across the stage. And I appre­ci­at­ed how the absur­di­ty is beau­ti­ful­ly punc­tu­at­ed with moments of satire through­out the per­for­mance.

A recur­ring theme through­out the sto­ry revolves around how we can coex­ist with oth­ers yet fail to engage with them mean­ing­ful­ly. Paul observes Binker for hours each day but remains obliv­i­ous to her true emo­tion­al state. In the open­ing scene, he reports “bright eyes, healthy coat, Blink­er is hap­py,” when Binker is any­thing but con­tent. In turn, Binker pays no heed to Paul’s exten­sive mono­logues about his crum­bling mar­riage and his fee­ble attempts to sal­vage it.

I do feel that the play’s dura­tion of 90 min­utes could have been trimmed. I was also dis­ap­point­ed by the use of an e‑cigarette as a prop.  It is an overused trope in movies to sym­bol­ise stress — usu­al­ly for the pur­pose of Big Tobac­co prod­uct place­ment. And for this sto­ry, it seemed high­ly improb­a­ble that a sci­en­tist would be puff­ing away in their lab.

Ulti­mate­ly, ‘I Want To Be Hap­py’ is an enjoy­able pro­duc­tion that also prompts reflec­tion on ani­mal rights—an enter­tain­ing explo­ration of par­al­lel lives and human-ani­mal rela­tion­ships.