Bruce Ryan Costella and Amica Hunter in SeaMAN, Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo supplied.

SeaMAN (Stage 1, ATB Westbury Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

In this relentlessly nutty and scrambling show by 2 Sleepy Ratguys (Amica Hunter and Bruce Ryan Costella) we meet a salt-crusted, windburned, garrulous old sea captain — in two bodies.

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The pair aren’t, as it transpires, nautical alter-egos exactly, with two intertwined versions of a story. They’re more of a sight/sound gag: matching grey wigs and underwear, a single rubber boot each, a shell phone, an old-tar accent and a tendency to say “as for ye…” or “if you catch me drift.” And they’ve been reduced to “30-minute boat tours, no refunds.”

Business, needless to say, is slow at “the beautiful Edmonton shoreline.” But here we are, and Captain Sea Man finds their crew — cabin boy, navigator, first-mate, cook — among us, armed with props.  As always, the willingness of Fringe audiences to be playful collaborators (tie knots in ropes, say ay aye captain), and improvise along with performers who are having fun not being slick or organized, is heartwarmingly generous.

And there was much laughter from the opening night audience. It’s one of those theatrical occasions when you know you’re out of sync with the rest of the crowd.

There’s no fourth wall at sea, it need hardly be said. And there’s no shortage of bright comic ideas in SeaMAN — flashbacks, cheap theatre jokes, fun with scale, demonstrations of fishing technique gone wrong, a storm at sea, a side story involving a siren. And Hunter and Costella, both likeable performers, are quick on the uptake, in asides to the audience as props go wrong or missing. But the dedication of SeaMAN to making absurdist comedy out of time-worn images and the lameness of lame gags, while non-stop and nothing short of game, begins to seem a little threadbare to me, in truth.

This is a show that could be clever, if it put its mind to it. So far, though, you’re entitled to wonder if it’s settled for the shallow end of the sea — for being a little satire, for adults, of kids’ theatre clichés.