Darrin Hagen, Jake Tkaczyk, Jason Hardwick, Trevor Schmidt in Microwave Coven, Guys in Disguise at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography

Microwave Coven (Stage 11, Varscona Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

At Maxine’s “contemporary split-level,” the suburban matrons of Placid Place are counting down to the stroke of 12, noon that is (much more convenient for scheduling than midnight).

To help support 12thnight.ca YEG theatre coverage, click here.

It’s 1977 and Maxine (Jake Tkaczyk), Fiona (Darrin Hagen), and Carmen (Trevor Schmidt), suburban cultists in dramatic matching robes, are preparing to open a portal into the demonic world.  They’re waiting the arrival of their new neighbour (Jason Hardwick), a perky innocent who’s “the closest thing we’ve ever had to a virgin.” And the snacks, including devilled eggs and devil’s food cake, are ready.

In this the latest from Guys in Disguise, and the writing team of Hagen and Schmidt, they worship at the altar of modernity, the microwave oven, glowing strangely in the dark. “O microwave we bow to you …” they chant, in tribute to this reasonably affordable instrument of world-wide domination.” The ding, the defrost button, the hypnotic rotating plate, the magical way a frozen hunk of something gets to be dinner (OK, maybe not chicken; that gets rubbery).

Guys in Disguise have long had a particular fascination with femininity, marriage, and the depression, dissatisfaction, and dreams of wives at home (Prepare For The Worst, Don’t Frown at the Gown, Crack in the Mirror), not to mentioned processed cheese. Suburbia, the traditional stomping ground of the married, is the playground for a sense of humour in which insights and double-entendres mingle over snacks (not hors d’oeuvres, that’s a different milieu). Fiona still remembers the moment when the neighbours came to watch her melt Velveeta for the first time in her new microwave. “I’ve never seen the entire subdivision come together like that.”

The mysterious way that small appliance worship opens the portal to the fires of hell is a pretty giddy concept, not to be explained by the likes of me. Suffice it to say this is the Guys in Disguise suburban version of Rosemary’s Baby. The performances in Schmidt’s production are, like the wigs (designer: Schmidt), amusing to see. The cast knows a lot about the comic potential of gravitas and costuming: Carmen’s rumbling baritone, the grandiloquent gestures of Maxine, the homey bustle of Fiona.

Take a break from your “serious” Fringe pursuits, and lose yourself in “the fog of distraction.”