Toronto Fringe Review: Mail Ordered

The mail-order-bride industry and third-world poverty are nothing to laugh at. But Shanice Stanislaus’s savage satire Mail Ordered is one of the funniest and sharpest fish-out-of-water entertainments since Sacha Baron Cohen waved an American flag as Borat. 

Stanislaus plays Lila, who’s dressed in a tacky white bridal dress and waves around a red fan, hoping to find a Canadian husband who can pay $100,000 U.S. (“cash or American Express”) so that her family back in her impoverished Asian village will survive.

Interacting with the audience to get up-to-date promotional photos of herself, she demonstrates her dancing techniques, housekeeping duties and tells a bunch of giraffe jokes. Meanwhile, she suggests a wilder past, back when she may have been involved with someone named Simon and she got into hip-hop music and dancing. 

Stanislaus’s persona, complete with malapropisms, is completely endearing, and the actor is a skillful, generous improviser. Director Aaron Coates ensures the shifts in the plot, which include something called a “change of luck ceremony,” feel natural.

By the end, you’ll be rooting for Lila as her knowledge of the world – and her increased self-confidence and agency over her life – expands. 

Mail Ordered is on now until July 16 as part of the Toronto Fringe. Tickets and show times here.