I have only walked out of one play in my entire life.

“House,” by Daniel McIvor, would have been the second — if I had been able to extricate myself, unnoticed, from the tiny theater. For 85 minutes I winced at the dated, misogynist, and gratuitously oddball humor of the playwright, delivered by an otherwise capable actor.

It was painful and it was embarrassing.

One of the great things about San Miguel de Allende is the number of Canadians who, at times, seem to outnumber their American Gringo compañeros. Because of this, we sheltered estadounidenses are exposed to playwrights like Norm Foster, for example, who otherwise go unnoticed in the US. Daniel McIvor is another.

Yet on this particular night, while the largely Canadian audience was roaring with laughter, I found the play so totally devoid of humor and pathos that I wondered if there just might be a distinctly Canadian sense of humor I couldn’t grasp.

The experience did have a silver lining, however. When I get home, these tickets are going up on my bulletin board to remind me that there really are plays much worse than my own first steps in this craft.