I certainly felt like a fish out of water when I walked into the rehearsal space for Pond Life with director Gord Rand. Traditionally my interviews have taken place at a neutral location with one person at a time, but on this particular day I was invited into the world of the artists in Factory Theatre’s remount of its Fringe success to speak with the whole cast and the director/playwright, all fresh out of an intense rehearsal session.

The five of them sat on the on-set couch and floor, and there I was chatting with a room full of actors I’ve previously worshipped at SummerWorks, Stratford, and Shaw. The illusion of grandeur, however, was quickly deflated: when I introduced myself, actor Ryan Blakely promptly toppled off his chair.

Pond Life, written and directed by the surprisingly soft-spoken (considering his provocative subject matter) Rand, was one of the hot hits of this year’s Fringe Festival. The play centres around the world of Sandy (Jeanie Calleja), Daisy (Kerry McPherson), Richard (Ryan McVittie), and Dick (Ryan Blakely)-mais oui, Richard and Dick coincidently played by Ryan and Ryan… and let the synchronicities begin!

The foursome is a conglomeration of a sociopath, a narcissist, a morally constrained intellectual, and an innocent (though she too is not without her dark side, as Calleja is careful to warn). They come together at a dinner party hosted by Sandy and Dick, whose motive is to share a secret, and where (as the promo claims) “Something is stirring, where something is sucking and flushing.” This dinner party, though, is distinctly different from CanStage’s recent cuisine-based Omnium Gatherum-when I asked what was on the menu for the evening, I wasn’t so much hyped for a pot roast as I was for raunchy wit, substance abuse, and intrigue.

Rand, McVittie, Calleja, McPherson, and Blakely have been lauded for their chemistry-not surprising, as two of them are married, the four went to school together, and all have worked together to great acclaim (Rand and Blakely were seen together in McVittie’s 2001 Fringe show The Contract). The great interpersonal chemistry has spawned an interesting dynamic, tangible during the interview. When asked to elaborate on his aim for the show, Rand responded contemplatively: “I want the audience to disintegrate.”

The room exploded with hearty, near violent in-joke laughter at this eerily grave moment, which (despite my best efforts!) was never really explained.

“My basic hope,” he later added, “is that people will be entertained and not be thinking about where they parked their car.” Then followed a short pause, until Calleja interjected lightly, “Laugh, laugh, laugh, laugh-disintegrate!”

Blakely, Calleja, McVittie, and Rand are all graduates of the U of T drama program, and hope to reach out to a student audience with Pond Life. Rand qualifies it as a “young person’s play-done out of the aesthetic of having watched a lot of TV.” All four agreed part of the importance of their university education was seeing their instructors and alumni at work in live theatre in the city, and for this reason they are offering a ten-dollar rebate coupon that can be printed off their website (www.pondlife.ca) to make it more affordable for a young audience.

Pond Life runs until December 18 at Factory Studio Theatre (125 Bathurst St.).