Edgar Perry, The Coldharts, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The Answer Is Fringe, as Edmonton has known for 42 summers, even before we knew we knew that. Here are some further thoughts on what you might see at The Answer Is Fringe. Don’t be daunted by the wealth of possibilities; be curious!

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Hold that thought (or how I got haunted, and came back for more): You know the Fringe has its own special reverb and continuity when you see instalments of a trilogy, years apart. With Edgar Perry, Brooklyn’s duo Coldharts, specialists in American gothic, return to their continuing fascination with the eerie stories and haunted life of horror meister Edgar Allan Poe. The tie that binds the three shivery plays is William Wilson, Poe’s unnerving story of a boy pursued by his own doppelganger.

Says Katie Hartman, “ten years ago when we set out to make the first piece, Edgar Allan, both Nick (Ryan, her Coldharts partner) and I wanted to play Edgar Allan Poe. Our solution was to take that idea and run with it: we had the opportunity to create a world in which there are two Edgar’s on stage, embodying different aspects of the historical character’s personalities, which were also heightened aspects of our own personalities.

Each instalment, Edgar Allan, Eddie Poe, and now Edgar Perry, “is  structured around a distinct period of Poe’s life when he was attending an educational institution. Each piece also highlights a different aspect of his canon…. In Edgar Perry, the setting is Fort Moultrie where Poe was first an enlisted soldier and then at West Point Military Academy where Poe’s studies in engineering and mathematics would greatly influence his works of proto-science fiction.”

He shoots he scores: In Life After Life After Hockey, the playwright/ actor/ director/ producer Kenneth Brown, the seminal artist who’s been part of 40 Fringes and the careers of generations of theatre artists, loops us back to his definitive prairie hockey play, a bona fide Canadian theatre hit, and the indelible character Rinkrat Brown — and the price tag in life (and love) of success. There’s music, too, played live by singer-songwriter Dana Wylie, and special guests. 12thnight had the fun to talking to him, as you’ll see in an upcoming 12thnight post.

Emerging playwright/ all-star veteran cast (a natural Fringe pairing): Jezec Sanders’s new thriller The Cabin on Bald Dune happens in an isolated cabin on an island (send a shiver?), where two women have repaired to  plan a business venture. April Banigan directs Kristi Hansen and Jenny McKillop in the DogHeart Theatre production.

All-star veteran playwright/ young cast (also a natural Fringe pairing): The Canadian playwright is Stephen Massicotte of Mary’s Wedding and The Emperor of Atlantis fame. The play is his much-awarded 2010 The Clockmaker, never staged (I think) in Edmonton till now. It starts with the Kafka-esque proposition that the mild-mannered title character is brought in for a crime he has committed — possibly in the future. The young indie company Shattered Glass Theatre is producing it. Sarah Van Tassell directs.

Multi-Vs, Honor, Affair of Honor and Magpie Theatre. Photp supplied

En garde in the multiverse: Affair of Honor, a Vancouver company devoted to “stunning fight and movement-based theatre,” affords you a rare (“very rare,” says producer April Killins) view of all-female stage combat in theatre. In Multi-Vs (a collaboration with Magpie Theatre), two strangers Nathania Bernabe and Jackie T. Hanlin are hurling themselves through time and space, (and an “infinite slew of universes.”

Ay Candela, Cuban Movements Dance Academy. Photo supplied.

Set in motion: In Ay Candela, the ever-adventurous Cuban Movements Dance Academy, whose dance-theatre productions are a fusion of powerful, dramatic movement and Cuban cultural history (Power of the Drum),  reimagines Chicago —the 1926 Maurine Dallas Watkins play that Kander and Ebb adapted for their musical — in dance, against the backdrop of tense racial relations in pre-revolutionary Havana.

From the top, a-five, six, seven, eight: The repertoire has its fair share of aspirational musicals, about stage-struck ingenues dreaming for the big time. The Noteworthy Life of Howard Barnes takes the opposite tack. Howard is an average bloke who discovers, to his dismay, that his life has become a musical. How can he exit stage left? And so begins Howard’s quest through the musical theatre repertoire. The Canadian premiere of this affectionate send-up of the American musical arrives at the Fringe courtesy of an Edmonton indie company, Light in the Dark Theatre.

Rebecca Merkley, creator and star of Jesus Teaches Us Things, Dammitammy Productions. Photo supplied.

Jesus H! He’s back, and you can forget those soulful gazes into the mid-distance. This is showbiz baby. Jesus headlines not one but two Fringe shows this year. In Randy Brososky’s Sweet Jesus – The Gospel According to Felt, he’s returned as a googly-eyed wiseacre puppet from beyond the grave to check up on the world. In Rebecca Merkley’s Jesus Teaches Us Things, which premiered last year, put your hands together for the big-hair dude who’s the Sunday school substitute teacher at the Christian Bible Assembly, rockin’ out to Journey and Queen.

Saluting the next generation: The cast of NextGen Theatre’s revival tof he wrenching 1998 Trevor Schmidt play Tales From The Hospital includes two of the original actors (Elizabeth Allison-Jorde and Linda Grass), along with two young artists (Janelle Jorde and Sophie May Healey). And over at Theatre Network, the young artists of the Summer Academy have taken Shakespeare’s prankish comedy The Merry Wives of Windsor in their youthful hands, an interesting match of ages since the original tilts towards middle-aged married people and a randy aging knight. The inspiration of Ellen Chorley’s cast is to imagine Falstaff as a faded ex-boy band star angling for a spot on a Merry Wives tour.

For annotated show listings, schedules, and tickets check fringetheatre.ca