Tara Travis in Erika The Red, Monster Theatre. Photo supplied

Erika The Red (Stage 15, Campus Saint-Jean Auditorium)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

In Erika The Red, Tara Travis single-handedly populates the stage with the following: villages of doomed Scandinavians, boat-loads of ferocious Viking warriors, a gang of inept but aspirational second-generation Vikings, a young heroine bent on revenge, a horse. Ah yes, and battles.

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In this new “epic one-woman Viking saga” from Vancouver’s Monster Theatre, you are seeing the improbable magic of one of the country’s most accomplished performers at work. All of the above are set in motion, with precision physicality and vocal dexterity, in an absorbing coming-of-age story with a complicated comic tone, a satisfying narrative arc. And a lot of characters.

As you’ll know from their archive of Fringe hits (including The Canada Show, Napoleon’s Secret Diary, Jesus Christ: The Lost Years among them), history is a big draw for the Monster mind. Here, co-creators Travis and Ryan Gladstone have been inspired by a surprising archaeological discovery: an impressive Viking warrior grave, richly furbished with weapons, and occupied by a skeleton that is female. Erika the Red, which even opens with its own amusing mockumentary, imagines the story that led to the grave.

The village trouble-maker teen is AWOL when her village gets raided, pillaged, and destroyed by Vikings. An unlikely avenger is born. At first she doesn’t understand the language of her Viking captors, gibberish with the occasional word you almost get. Gradually, gibberish retreats as Erika learns Viking. And then, hey, we’ve all learned Viking.

Tara Travis in Erika The Red, Monster Theatre at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo supplied.

And the gang of young Viking wannabes, who keep arriving at villages after all the killing and pillaging is already done, get individualized by Travis. They have names, distinctive postures, gaits, facial grimaces, and appear in scenes together. The sea adventure that follows — storms, shipwrecks, sea monsters — is ingeniously set forth against Gladstone’s projection-scape. And Erika, a girl!, gradually takes charge, with her Scandinavian know-how and single-mindedness. Travis even does her own live recurring Erika the Viking warrior-type poster images onstage.

In the course of 60 minutes, an ultra-violent revenge story unspools farther and farther and gets gathered back in, with additional narrative colours lightly applied: grief, friendship, finding your own family. Impressively done. Clever and fun.