Deanna Fleysher and Brooke Sciacca in The Method Prix. Photo by Sulai Lopez

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Starting Thursday you can take ownership of The Great Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything. Yes, in an amazing summer telescoping of time, the Fringe is back in Old Strathcona, with the 42nd annual edition of Edmonton’s 11-day-and-night theatre bash.

The Answer Is Fringe. Design by Pete Nguyen.

The 185-show Fringe universe of 2023 is yours to explore. What looks intriguing? Artists are taking a chance at the Fringe, and so should you. You never really know in advance what you’ll discover. After all this theatre town is where “fringe” was reborn as a verb. But just to get you started on your travels through the Fringe galaxy, here’s a preliminary trail mix of shows that caught my eye —whether for the premise, the play, the cast, the company, the playwright, the director, the form, the general unlikeliness and over-all weirdness…. I haven’t seen them either; we’ll be hitchhiking together. Stand by, 12thnight companion pieces, and more suggestions, are coming.

The Method Prix. Nearly a dozen Fringes ago we caught a brilliant original taking big risks in Butt Kapinski. A jaded, smudgy-eyed private dick, snarling in classic idiom, mingling with the assorted burnouts and sad cases in the seedy part of town (that would be us, the audience) to shoot a film noir. A “drag clown” of apparently unlimited fearlessness, L.A.’s Deanna Fleysher is back with a new show, billed mysteriously as “an interactive drag comedy special.” In The Method Prix, the legendary director Vincent Prix is shooting a movie starring a “Hollywood wild child” *(Brooke Sciacca) and needs a co-star: that would be us. It could be our big break.

Tiger Lady, Dead Rabbits Theatre, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied.

Tiger Lady. The London-based Dead Rabbits Theatre, who revealed wonderful theatrical ingenuity in My Love Lies Frozen in the Ice and The Dragon, are back for the Edmonton Fringe where, amazingly, they made their start. Their new show, for a cast of six, is spun from the true tale of circus star Mabel Stark, the first-ever female tiger-tamer in 1920s. Find out more about the Dead Rabbits in an upcoming 12thnight post.

Sea Wall. Bright Young Things, an Edmonton indie theatre that leans into the classic mid-20th century repertoire — Coward, Rattigan, Ionesco, and one year, Sartre (not normally a summer party guy)—is back at the Fringe. And, surprisingly, it’s with a beautifully formed one-man play by star Brit playwright Simon Stephens (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) specially written for the Fleabag hot priest actor Andrew Scott, about the way our lives and happiness are poised delicately, treacherously, on a point. “It was written specifically to have no set, and to be performed in natural light where possible,” says director Belinda Cornish, “which is really rather perfect for the Fringe.” Her production stars the exceptional ex-Edmontonian actor Jamie Cavanagh (East of Berlin, Armstrong’s War,Venus in Fur).

Forest of Truth, Theatre Group GUMBO, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied

Forest of Truth: Searching for something entirely kooky, possibly weird, quintessentially fringe-y, maybe even hallucinatory? I didn’t see Osaka’s Theatre Group GUMBO the last time they were here, Are You Lovin’ It? in 2019 (but heard reports of awestruck bafflement). Judging by the preview at the Fringe launch this week, this could be the one that embraces your perplexity. It’s billed as “a fantastically distorted love comedy.” And the costumes look fabulous. OK, I’m in.

Cameryn Moore, “muse,” Little Black Book Productions. Photo by Hassan Ghoncheh.

muse: an experiment in storytelling and life drawing: It isn’t a play. It’s not scripted. It’s a conversation between a nude model, Berlin-based theatre artist Cameryn Moore (Nerdfucker), and the audience. We’re invited to draw her (some art materials are available, or you can bring your own) and ask her questions. Or not. Look for the 12thnight interview with this risk-taker in an upcoming post.

Ingrid Hansen and Stéphanie Mori-Roberts in The Merkin Sisters: Deux, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied

The Merkin Sisters: Deux. The last time they were here, this duo of unusually hairy sibling performance artistes (Ingrid Hansen and Stéphanie Morin-Robert) ricocheted hilariously through the rarefied self-important world of the artsiest High Art with every kind of lunatic “theatrical” device. These fearlessly playful subversives are back with Deux, a new pièce de résistance (with original music from their recently released “dark-pop comedy album” in which they collaborated with Canadian comedy songstress Shirley Gnome). .

The Catalogue of Sexual Anxieties, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied.

The Catalogue of Sexual Anxieties. Billed as a playground for musical theatre, cabaret, burlesque, stand-up, sketch and spoken word poetry — all about sex from the womanly perspective — this new theatre piece is by the three artists, from three different countries (the U.K., Canada, and France), who perform it. Aniqa Charania, Marion Poli, Charlotte Szabo, the winners of the Fringe’s Mowat Diversity Award this year, met at the Royal Conservatoire in Glasgow. The original music leans into the ‘40s three-part harmony swing/boogie-woogie style of the Andrew Sisters. And Kate Ryan of Plain Jane Theatre, a theatre that specializes in off-centre musicals, directs.

Rat Academy, Batrabbit Productions, Edmonton Fringe 2023

Rat Academy. Dayna Lea Hoffmann’s season included two juicy starring roles, in the satire All The Little Animals I Have Eaten at Shadow and the coming-of age story A Hundred Words For Snow at Northern Light Theatre. How can you not be intrigued to see this terrific multi-faceted actor in cross-species clown mode? In Rat Academy with Katie Yoner she’s a rodent, in tough in a rat-free province, survival coach to a lab rat escapee.

What Was Is All: With this new folk-rock musical, Nextfest returns to its cross-festival initiative of last summer, by producing shows at the Fringe. One is this new “folk-rock/ country-bluegrass” musical by the team of Jacquelin Walters and Michael Watt. It started life in 2022 as a 45-minute song cycle /concert; it played Theatre Network’s debut Another F!#@$G Festival. And now it’s full-fledged musical theatre, with 20 songs, a live band, an un-Fringe-y sized cast and a mysterious book about six townsfolk, alive and dead, and a stranger — with a whiff of the supernatural. Billed as “a darkly comic tragedy.”

Bathsheba and the Books. The premise of this David Ellis Heyman comedy is pretty irresistible: comedy based on the Old Testament, which historically just hasn’t been a laughter magnet. Did you know that it was put together by the biblical hottie of the title? Director Davina Stewart has assembled a top-drawer four-actor cast led by Aimée Beaudoin as the woman of the hour, er, the millennia.

Chris Cook in Fiji, Shatter Glass Theatre, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied.

Fiji. “This is the type of show where it’s hard to know how much to reveal beforehand,” says Michelle Robb. A playwright herself (Tell Us What Happened), she turns producer with Gavin Dyer for the Fringe. By a London-based trio of playwrights, it’s billed, intriguingly, as “a true crime-inspired love story” that starts online; the producers call “a dark funny gem.” This North American premiere marks the the directing debut of the fine actor Lora Brovold. And they’ve attracted a starry bunch of theatre pros, including actors Vance Avery and Chris Cook, sound designer Dave Clark and designer Tessa Stamp. One of the secrets of the success of the Edmonton Fringe is the way Edmonton’s seasoned theatre pros are drawn to be there. 

The Approach. The Edmonton indie Trunk Theatre has consistently opened up our theatre to the contemporary repertoire across the border and the pond. The Approach, a 2021 play of exquisite nuance by Irish playwright Mark O’Rowe, has three women, estranged friends and former roommates, reconnecting, in a variety of perms and combs, over coffee. Amy DeFelice directs a strong Edmonton cast: Kendra Connor, Julie Golosky, Twilla McLeod.   

Cody Porter in Amor de Cosmos: a delusional musical, Joe Clark Productions, Edmonton Fringe. Photo cupplied.

Amor de Cosmos: a delusional musical. Everything about this new musical sounds loopy and appealing. How can you not be attracted to the prospect of a one-actor musical with original music by  singer-songwriter Lindsey Walker (ren & the wake)? And a book by Richard Kelly Kemick written in iambic pentameter? About the bizarre career, and implosion of a real-life Canadian politico, in fact the second B.C. premier, who in a couple of years veered wildly from left to right wing and was declared legally insane? Actually the story of how Amor de Cosmos came to be at the Edmonton Fringe, a last minute addition, with a much shorter time slot and a different actor (the game Cody Porter), is pretty crazy too. Stay tuned for an upcoming 12thnight interview with the engaging Walker. She calls it “good mayhem.”

Scoobie Doosical.  Zoinks. A new musical from the presiding muse of Dammitammy Productions Rebecca Merkley, who writes, composes, directs. It isn’t the first time she’s written a musical based on a cartoon: Rivercity the Musical is spun from the Archie comics. The Scoobie characters are based on the goofy cartoon, but that’s just the start. Meet Merkley in an upcoming 12thnight post.

Elena Belyea in This Won’t Hurt, I Promise, Tiny Bear Jaws, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied

This won’t hurt I promise. The unceasing, ever-morphing anxieties of the modern age have always been meat and drink to Tiny Bear Jaws, witness plays like Miss Katelyn’s Grade Threes Prepare For The Inevitable, multi-disciplinary ‘musicals’  like I Don’t Even Miss You, or the sketch comedy of Gender? I Hardly Know Them. Elena Belyea is a a true original, and a witty writer. This new piece is billed as “a standup hybrid.” I don’t know what to expect, which makes it irresistible. Geoffrey Simon Brown directs.

The Fringe annotated listings, schedule, and tickets: fringetheatre.ca