Die-Nasty, Fringe 2024 edition. That’s Kristi Hansen as a shifty theatre reviewer named Liz Nicholls. Photo by Janna Hove.

Die-Nasty! Edmonton’s Live Improvised Soap Opera (Stage 11, Varscona Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

I finally dropped in last night on Die-Nasty, the ultra-meta super-fringified Fringe edition of Edmonton’s weekly improvised soap, a venerable must-see Edmonton comedy institution.

It’s set at the Fringe and it’s about the Fringe (its shows, its artistes, its administrators, vendors, volunteers, street performers, buskers, its box office whiz kids and its proprietors of Nordic spas, and oh yeah its theatre critics…). By night #7, an episode directed by Peter Brown, Fringe free-association has turned into possible dream scenarios that have turned into nightmare sequences, with ghosts and everything. “Everyone’s a clown now,” someone says. Like I say, scary as hell.

A lot has apparently happened. Alyson Dicey (Kirsten Throndson), the director of KidsFringe known for her unstoppable good nature and cute hats), seems to have died, alas, although whether in a clown car accident I cannot say. She’s in “purgatorial limbo,” and in scene 1 is taking advice from sardonic The Ghost of Acacia Hall (Gwen Coburn) about whether to return to life or stay dead. The Fringe has a kind of non-committal existential logic that way. “Your choice,” shrugs the Ghost.

Fringe artistic director Murray Utas whose hair levitates at moments of extreme stress, is played by Randy Brososky in a performance that actually does capture the way he talks, fast, and gathering speed and emphasis till all the syllables join together in communal solidarity. He has moved KidsFringe to the beer tent. “The best decision we ever made,” he has reportedly declared.

There’s been a Fringe murder, I gather. And Rachel Notley (Shannon Blanchet) and a Mormon detective, Elder Evans (Jason Hardwick), a lifelong Notley supporter, are investigating it (hmmm, a back story that somehow floated free before I got there). Hamish McCrackin (Cody Porter, a possibly criminal loon who gazes into the mid-distance with a terrifying fixity) has evidently gone mad in Fringe jail. Seven straight nights at the Fringe can do that to anyone, no matter how sturdy mentally they think they are. Shirley Dunaphew (Casey Suliak) introduces “my new son from Toronto” in a queasy and ambiguous little scene. And is that a little flicker of spark between Shirley and Murray, (who’s adopted a small son, by the way, played charmingly by Nikki Hulowski)? Time, and a few more episodes, will tell.

Liz Nicholls (Kristi Hansen), a shifty-eyed theatre reviewer with big blonde wedge hair, has witnessed a murder but is pretty keen to weasel out of writing an official statement. Surely she’s not implicated! Anyhow, she’s getting Liz Nicholls tattooed on her butt by a needle artiste with an exotic accent (Jacob Banigan). Presumably in case of a sudden identity crisis she can check out her byline in a mirror. Or is this just a case of pure unadulterated narcissism?

“I’m happy for my sister at the National Post, really” she insists, unconvincingly. “And for being the only one who knows what I’m talking about.”

I’ve got to think about that. Later. When I’ve figured out the hair thing.