Ingrid Hansen and Stéphanie Morin-Robert in The Merkin Sisters: Deux, Edmonton Fringe. Photo supplied

The Merkin Sisters: Deux (Stage 13, Service Credit Union Theatre, La Cité francophone)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

But is it Art?

The Merkin Sisters, that sibling duo of hirsute avant-gardistes, are back at the Fringe after six years to tease and tickle that Ultimate Question once more in their follow-up show.    

And those Merkins (Ingrid Hansen and Stéphanie Morin-Robert) know how to make an entrance. Unsmiling, they jostle through the audience in the galleries butt first, in bathrobes and towel mohawks — direct from the gender-neutral shower room so to speak — to get to the stage. That’s where high-style robotic choreography gives way to a version of Swan Lake. And that’s where there’s an explosion of pubic hair the likes of which haven’t been seen here since they were last in town.

It’s performance art that’s a funny, deadpan satire of performance art. If you’re asking, but what does it mean? you are so on the wrong track. The Merkin Sisters makes playful, inventive physical comedy from free association, unhinged from causality or motivation or logic, glowering all the while. And they fool around, hilariously, with a fundamental principle of the avant-garde: if you don’t find it baffling it’s not High Art (maybe only medium-low to low,). “Some people ask us why we do what we do (moment of silence). And what it is we do do,” a Merkin asks us solemnly.

Exactly. There’s a veritable catalogue of theatrical devices to jar you out of your staid middlebrow lives and present you the chance to ask another High Art question (while laughing): But is it ironic?

The Merkins are scornful; they cast withering looks our way. They’re not here to ingratiate themselves with the audience in one of those interactive shows where there’s no right answer. This is High Art. Dancing Lycra lipstick tubes that are their own mouths, a cutting-edge development in contemporary puppetry. And there are appearances at perplexing moments by old-fashioned puppets too, There’s a ne plus ultra masturbation scene for two. There’s an amplitude of body hair, and a birth scene that’s obligatory in the metaphor lexicon of audience interaction performance art.

And every once in a while, a Merkin reaches into a jar of little pieces of paper on which we’ve all answered a question about the first time we lost (fill in the blank) — and annotates tersely: “Pandemic Art,” “Un-relatable art” and the like.

Actually one of the Merkins, grouchy, has a question too, doubtlessly asked many times in the world of High Art: “why do I always have to play the vagina?” Answer: “because you have the bigger mouth.”

The fun of The Merkin Sisters is to  see physical comedians, and a goofy comic invention, unleashed on Performance Art. You get to see what performance art would look like if it was riotous. If you’ve seen one too many broody Fringe confessionals, this could be your kind of show. Then give yourself an encore: hie yourself to Hansen’s weird and kooky solo show Epidermis Circus.