What can Toronto expect at Charlie Sheen’s Violent Torpedo of Truth stop at Massey Hall?
It’s old news now that Charlie Sheen’s live show, My Violent Torpedo of Truth, bombed at its Detroit debut (and there are plenty of videos to prove it). With 80,000 tickets sold for the rest of the tour—including those for two Massey Hall sessions later this week—organizers knew they had to revamp the show. To do so, they relied on Joey Scoleri, a former Toronto radio personality and Violent Torpedo co-producer. The native son overhauled the show, turning it into a Q&A—a straightforward format that allows Sheen to interact with fans. The reviews so far are mixed. It was reasonably well-received in Chicago, but New Yorkers, who were privy to the actor’s antics over the weekend, had polarized reactions. The question for us is: will the show be up to snuff for its Toronto debut on Thursday?
“What happened in Detroit was that [Sheen] tried to come up with a conceptual show, because he has a lot of things he wants to express in his mind, and it didn’t quite work on the level that it needed to. The audience was expecting something quite different,” Scoleri told the Toronto Star. “In Chicago, we just gave the people what they wanted and what we initially discussed…giving ‘Charlie-isms’ and Charlie being Charlie.”
So what can ticket-holding Torontonians expect? Scoleri says Sheen is sticking with the Q&A format, which means the audience may be privy to some typical Sheen-isms, such as this response when he was asked why he’s paid for sex: “Because I had millions to blow. I ran out of things to buy” (ladies of Jarvis, beware). Locals can probably also count on Sheen doing some city-specific wardrobe changes. In Detroit, the wily warlock burned his Two and Half Men shirt and slipped into one with a Detroit Tigers logo; in New York, he tore off a John Lennon t-shirt to put on one bearing an the initials FDNY. For the Toronto show, may we suggest a Leafs jersey over a Raptors singlet? Sheen, the Leafs and the Raps all need their fans’ hope to spring eternal.
There is also hope that high-profile Torontonians could end up onstage with Sheen. At the New York show, former Met player Darryl Strawberry and Inside the Actor’s Studio host James Lipton were called up to join Sheen. Who might get brought on to the Massey Hall stage? We nominate the Toronto equivalents: Robbie Alomar (he’s back!) and Jian Ghomeshi.
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