What is theatre all about? Stephanie Morin-Robert Performance Society: Bushel and Peck, a guest 12thnight review by Todd Babiak

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

Stephanie Morin-Robert and Alastair Knowles in Bushel and Peck. Photo by Thadeus Hink

Stephanie Morin-Robert Performance Society: Bushel and Peck (Stage 4, Academy at King Edward)

Audiences can be so demanding. Before a piece of perfectly absurd performance art you can almost smell the question roasting in their brains: “What does it mean?”

It would be uncharitable to call Bushel and Peck meaninglessness. It is, instead, a funny and winning and kooky search for meaning in a world — even a theatre tradition — that makes meaning too easy.

Or something.

To describe Bushel and Peck too rigorously would ruin its charm. Stephanie Morin-Robert and Alastair Knowles are Fringe stars who push themselves, in Bushel and Peck, to the fringes of the festival with a good, unanswerable question: what is theatre all about?

They take it apart in inventive costumes, with playful use of sound and light, with a script flying everywhere, with Muppet voices, small appliances, and a hunk of plywood that deserves an award for “prop of the festival.”

Now that we are a few days and, hopefully, several shows into the festival, Bushel and Peck is a refreshing slice of pickled ginger between heavy slabs of theatrical sushi, a reminder of what we’re all here for.

— Todd Babiak

 

 

 

 

 

 

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“Peculiar and unusual beauty”: a unique “multi-threat talent” strikes again in Balls of Yarns. A guest 12thnight Fringe review by Alan Kellogg

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

Paul Strickland in Balls of Yarns. Photo by Dan R. Winters

Balls of Yarns (Stage 2, Backstage Theatre)

Rummaging through my Fringe-necessary man-purse, I happened upon a small piece of blue yarn. I was about to huck it in my ever-bulging waste paper basket, when I stopped. It’s now safely draped over my favourite desk thing, a Talavera pencil case I bought in México.

I may never move it.

Because, you see, it will forever remind me of this wondrous solo performance piece by Paul Strickland. The piece of yarn was handed out to each audience member in a packed theatre before the show as “the press kit.” If that strikes you as odd and intriguing, even endearing, press on. As he said in a cheery aside to a patron early into the story, “it’s going to get a lot weirder.”

True, and this is a good thing.  The central story — among many, over an hour that flew by – involves visiting a strange town. This is a place where hotel guests can engage in spirited two-way dialogue (and duet) with a creaky door, peruse the fun house mirrors resting against trees in the park, sample the delights and denizens like 3-Tooth Tony at Patsy’s Perspective diner, and most importantly, sort out the differences between the library and “truth-braries.” Birds are in the mix, too. There are these balls of yarn on the shelves, you see, and when connected to a tin can listening device spin amazing (!) — believe it — stories.

And while there are plenty of laughs here, there is also a sinister presence you can’t quite can’t get your metaphorical knitting needle on, which deepens the broth.

Strickland, an über-sympathetic figure onstage, lives in Covington, Kentucky, a suburb of Cincinnati at the confluence of the Ohio and (yes) Licking rivers. He’s a multi-threat talent who has become a multi-kudo’ed Fringe tour favourite of late. The storytelling — call it what you will, but it’s artful, funny and moving — is enlivened by skilled guitar fills and vocals. We’re even treated to a self-effacing dream ballet sequence.

There’s no one out there (a small joke for those who have seen the show) like Strickland. The only comparison I could summon was (very) early Biff Rose in live performance, before he ran off the rails.

The word is out. Balls of Yarns is a hit and deserves to be. If you are prepared to appreciate “peculiar and unusual beauty” — and why not? — snap up your tickets now.

–Alan Kellogg

 

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Touching and tuneful: Sweethearts of the 49th, a guest 12thnight Fringe review by Alan Kellogg

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

Sweethearts of the 49th by Andrea House, Stardust Players. Photo supplied.

Sweethearts of the 49th  (Stage 39, CKUA Performance Space, Jasper Ave. downtown Edmonton)

With a provenance including the bright lights Andrea House (playwright), Davina Stewart (director) and Erik Mortimer (musical director) the chances are excellent that a smart and entertaining production will follow.

Proof positive is this touching, tuneful story set in Lethbridge, 1943.

Joanne’s (Gianna Read-Skelton) father, owner of radio station CIRK, has been taken off to hospital with heart attack symptoms. It’s up to the young daughter and her vocalizing pals Pixie (Madelaine Knight) and Lacey (Etta George House) to keep the station broadcasting. Avoiding “dead air” is no easy task though, since the trio hasn’t a clue what to do and CIRK’s programming resources are wartime meagre.

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Enter a talented stranger named Maxine (Michelle Diaz) and everything changes. For the better. The Girls Next Door, a shaky  vocal trio, morphs into a solid quartet. And Maxine (an homage to an Andrews sister perhaps?) is also a clever and enterprising dynamo who discovers other materials at hand, including a radio play script. All is well.

Ah, but of course it isn’t. There are secrets here, large and small, revealed slowly to us.  Among other intrigues, we are confronted with Canada’s dark Second World War past regarding the shameful internment of Japanese-Canadians and — rarely explored — the very real grief-borne passions that inspired it.

Interspersed with the drama are a variety of well-executed period hits, including the likes of At Last, Straighten Up and Fly Right, Buffalo Gals and This Little Light of Mine. I confess to a tear or two witnessing Joanne’s lovely reading of I’ll Be Seeing You.

As you might expect from these pros, everything is properly in place here, from sensible direction and solid performances to costumes, set and house (small joke) sound and design. Too bad the otherwise decent performance space is downtown and sunlit, but what can you do? For, seeing this worthy effort at CKUA makes a great of cosmic sense given its proud, pioneering history.

– Alan Kellogg

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You’ll be swell, you’ll be great! Everything’s Coming Up Chickens, a Plain Janes revue. A Fringe review

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

Karina Cox, Jarrett Krissa, Kendra Connor, Garett Ross in Everything’s Coming Up Chickens! A Review, Plain Jane Theatre. Photo by db photographics.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Everything’s Coming Up Chickens: A Revue (Stage 12, Varscona Theatre)

This highly entertaining revue is what happens when you let a company of musical theatre experts roam through their specialty repertoire (the odd, the neglected, the obscure, the mistreated gems) with a theme in mind. Everything’s Coming Up Chickens is an homage to the showbiz life from the inside out, the backstage view, the actor’s life with its soul-destroying auditions and rejections, impossible audiences, the friction of creating a musical together.

The Janes’ first-ever revue at the Fringe in their eight-summer history at the festival — assembled by director Kate Ryan and musical director Janice Flower (a superb pianist/arranger, onstage at the keyboard) — is a fizzy musical comedy affair.

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What fun for us that a top-notch cast of four — every size and shape and voice — apply their theatrical wits, musical chops, and comic timing to creating a playful, self-referential context for numbers we’ve probably never heard from musicals we mostly didn’t know about (I speak for myself here and, OK, some “we” do, but viewed through a different lens).

C’mon, jaded Fringe person, you can’t just arrive at a theatre expecting to hear Through A Keyhole from the 1933 Moss Hart/ Noel Coward revue As Thousands Cheer. You just have to feel really happy when you do. 

The opening number is borrowed for the occasion from Fiddler’s Tevye and his famous exhortation, amusingly adjusted by the revue Forbidden Broadway (a tradition of its own). Ambition!  And as Garett Ross explains wryly, there’s been an outbreak right here in River City and it’s called the Fringe: “250,000 actors trying their best not to end up back in their parents’ basement.”

And the show, as per the title, is bookended by another ode to ambition, this one from the ne plus ultra of stage mothers in Gypsy, with a kooky poultry coda.

There are vaudeville scenes, like Jesus (Jarrett Krissa) at a big audition (he’s been on tour, 40 days in the wilderness). It wraps around Good Connections (J.C. is the son of the producer), a number from Scrambled Feet (presented in the day by the Janes’ predecessor Leave It To Jane).

Ross, who has a haunted look about him that’s ideal for rueful comedy, shines as the disaffected half of a musical writing team in a number Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll  Along. Kendra Connor’s crystalline soprano lends itself to the challenges of vintage in all its operetta glory. She nails Noel Coward’s soaring I’ll Follow My Secret Heart.

That hard life in the theatre is something for which eye-watering desire, against the odds-against facteur, is de rigueur: Karina Cox’s knockout version of Best in the World (from the Jerry Herman musical A Day In Hollywood A Night In The Ukraine beautifully captrues the chin-up desperation and hope of it all.

A smart, funny, heartfelt valentine to troupers, on every stage large and small.

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Have you heard the one about… Punch Up, a FRINGE REVIEW

Posted on August 20, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

Evan Hall and Perry Gratton in Punch Up. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Punch Up (Stage 9, Telus Phone Museum)

Punch Up is a classic joke set-up on legs. SO … The Most Pathetic Guy Ever kidnaps The Funniest Man Alive, so he can learn to make The Saddest Girl in the World Laugh.

The stakes are high. Life and death, actually. If the Most Pathetic Guy Ever (Perry Gratton) can’t get The Saddest Girl in the World (Merran Carr-Wiggin) to laugh, she will commit suicide. And he’ll have to help her do it, even though he’s fallen in love with her at first sight. That’s the deal.

And here’s the catch. The Most Pathetic Guy Ever, Duncan (Perry Gratton), a die-hard comedy nerd, is supremely unfunny. The simplest knock-knock joke is beyond his grasp. 

Duncan’s hostage, his second-favourite comedian Pat (Evan Hall), has his work cut out for him. Pat himself has lost his funny when his wife, the other half of his comedy act, dumped him and took his best jokes. And being chained to a typewriter in Duncan’s “super secret hideaway” has not lifted Pat’s spirits.

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By the Canadian playwright Kat Sandler and smartly directed by Braydon Dowler-Coltman, Punch Up is a funny comedy about comedy, about what’s funny and what’s not. What’s always been funny, historically? Is it still funny if you screw up the delivery? It’s a whirlwind catalogue of the classics — whoopee cushions, pratfalls, pies-in-the-face, Abbott & Costello, Mel Brooks, the Seinfeldian anecdote…. 

Merran Carr-Wiggin in Punch Up. Photo supplied.

The comedy of tragic excess is the Saddest Girl’s domain.  Brenda’s woe-filled biography is one personal tragedy after another, non-stop. And Pat and Duncan, the one exponentially exasperated and the other dimly eager and uncomprehending, are a classic two-man comedy act, of the vaudevillian stripe.

The actors, all-three, are excellent as characters trapped in a joke set-up. They bounce off each other at high-speed in Dowler-Coltman’s production, timed like a demented cuckoo clock and punched up to a farcical buzz-saw pace.    

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The acquisition of, well, in a word, joy! A Lesson in Brio, a Fringe review

Posted on August 19, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

Patricia Cerra, Jenny McKillop, Rachel Bowron, Mathew Hulshot in A Lesson in Brio, Teatro La Quindicina. Photo by Mat Busby.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

A Lesson in Brio (Stage 12, Varscona Theatre)

The verdict is out on whether charm or perfect pitch, any more than a first-rate digestion, can be learned. But Stewart Lemoine’s A Lesson Brio, very timely in these glum times, proposes that brio can. And along with brio, its mystery corollary, charisma.

What delightful news. A lively and charming lecturer Dr. Guinevere (Jenny McKillop) beams at us from the empty stage, and explains that she’s a scholar (with a PhD) in these matters. And she assures us that “no theatrical artifice has been employed” in her step-by-demo of how brio (the contagious animation that attracts other people and changes lives) might be acquired.

This, of course, is completely (and hilariously) untrue). But A Lesson in Brio is so sly and smart, so artful about the ways it plays on either side of the fourth wall, that theatre jokes are effortlessly part of the comedy. 

You will enjoy the way Dr. Guinevere’s assistants — yes! played by real actors, surely the only way to “do” real life! — step in and out of their roles to present revealing scenes. Not least the “the part of the audience volunteer” played by Patricia (Patricia Cerra). 

The demo subject Ric, played by actor Mathew (the highly amusing Mathew Hulshof), would seem to be an difficult test case for Dr. Guinevere’s methodology. Not only is he listless (for reasons that will be revealed), but he is outstandingly dumb, too dumb too know he’s dumb. And when he’s kicked out of the car by his girlfriend Destiny on the border between Alberta and Saskatchewan for being dumb, the wheels for his reclamation into a more joyful life are set in motion.

The performances by actors playing actors playing test subjects are very funny; Lemoine is at his wittiest. And the situations set up in the play for resolution by Dr. Guinevere will make you laugh out loud. A sublime open-mike scene in Lloydminster — by no means a frequent location, I would hazard, for comic scenes that are out-and-out show-stoppers — stars Rachel Bowron as Rachel playing a singer-songwriter. Ditto flashbacks in which Dr. Guinevere revisits her formative childhood years, when she restored joy and the will to live to her widowed father in a series of educational initiatives that include conversational Welsh.

Wistfulness be gone. Finally, a comedy that’s actually about how to be more lighthearted and joyful. And it works! 

  

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Taking holy orders, holy smoke: Bad Habits, a guest 12thnight Fringe review by Todd Babiak

Posted on August 19, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

Bad Habits, A Little Bit Off. Photo supplied.

Bad Habits(Stage 37, Auditorium at Campus Saint-Jean)

Sister Florence welcomes us postulates in a gruff accent, with a hint of New Jersey. It comes with a warning: entering the convent isn’t easy. Becoming a bride of Christ is not for everyone.

Life in the nunnery may be for one among us: Margarine Tub, a buck-toothed young woman with plenty of energy and a sincere love of the Lord. Sister Florence is sceptical but Margarine is a hard worker — if a bit too curious.

Sister Florence and Margarine Tub ride hoverboards — holy rollers — across the stage, as nuns do. When she is left alone to tidy the convent, singing, “Cleaning up, cleaning up for Jesus,” Margarine breaks one of the only rules: don’t read the bad book.

Enter the funniest, saddest Satan in history.

Amica Hunter (Margarine) and David Cantor (Sister Florence) are veterans of the Edmonton Fringe. Bella Culpa and Beau & Aero were just as funny and charming as Bad Habits, and just as naughty, but this is the first time they have mixed physical comedy with extensive dialogue.

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They’re so charismatic, so silly, and so intelligent it would be a fine hour of entertainment to watch them feed guinea pigs. Their take on religion isn’t satire, exactly, and they aren’t trying to teach us anything, which is a genuine relief. They’re theatre people who know we love theatre, who get their jokes about it, and don’t mind if the penguin sex scene doesn’t advance the plot.

— Todd Babiak

 

 

 

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Joining the circus: Merk du Soleil, a guest 12thnight Fringe review by Alan Kellogg

Posted on August 19, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

Rebecca Merkley in Merk du Soleil, Dammitammy Productions. Photo supplied.

Merk du Soleil (Stage 21, El Cortez Mexican Kitchen and Tequila Bar)

Well, one thing about this show is its wonderful venue, the downstairs mine/vault of El Cortez, one of the city’s hippest, best-designed restaurants. There’s a bar down there and you can sip a nice drink as you ponder what the hell is going on onstage. Upstairs, tacos al pastor beckon.

It’s all in quotations, this one, and we shouldn’t be taking anything seriously. Whatever the concept, it’s basically a sort of wonky variety show, where sparkly, unitard-ed Merk (Edmonton playwright/ director/ co-designer Rebecca Merkley) keeps procrastinating from performing a death-defying trick. Helping her out in a series of bits and running gags — that include a terrible standup comic, an elephant guy, God Save the Queen whilst waving rainbow Pride banners, and so much, much more — are one-man-band Chet (Andrew Brostrom), Spruce Grove Boob E (Kristina Hunszinger) Spruce Grove Boob J (Josh Travnik).

It’s stupid, really stupid, and if that is the intent, so be it. These are actually talented, attractive, theatre-schooled players who can sing, dance and play with high energy and almost save this seemingly thrown-together, if studiously un-pretentious, muddle. If you’re looking for a 45-minute diversion (a drink helps) that will support some local actors and musicians, give it a whirl.

 — Alan Kellogg

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Behind the scenes in Bountiful, a guest 12thnight Fringe review by Alan Kellogg

Posted on August 19, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

Bountiful, Dammitammy Productions. Photo supplied.

Bountiful (Stage 35 L’Unithéâtre at La Cité francophone)

Surely there is a compelling theatre piece to be written and staged surrounding the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints community in Bountiful, B.C. For years, Warren Jeffs — the American “Prophet” of the breakaway Mormon faith, now serving a prison sentence in the U.S. — has been in the news along with his Canadian Bishop. In June, Bountiful’s Winston Blackmore (who was found to have taken two dozen wives) and James Ohler (five wives) were sentenced by a B.C. Supreme Court judge to house arrest and community service for practising polygamy.

And the idea to tell the story to a “gentile” audience via a conflicted but still-in-the-fold-church “sister” is a particularly inspired artistic decison, one made by Bountiful’s Edmontonplaywright/ designer/ director Rebecca Merkley. Heaven knows, the sect has had plenty of bad press, most of it richly deserved. But what does it look like from the inside? And from the perspective of women?

Merkley knows something about this from personal experience, too, as she grew up in nearby Creston, B.C. And as she points out in the program notes, the play is indeed inspired by real events.

There’s not much faulting the (generally) perfectly competent cast here, or even the direction or staging. There are indeed some winning musical moments. Actors Kayla Gorman, Jameela McNeil, Laura Raboud and Emma Wilmott give it their all. Gorman, the narrator, is particularly effective and McNeil delivers a typically strong turn. But they aren’t given many favours. Real people — even cultists — just don’t talk like this, do they?

No, the problem here is the storytelling, the script. It’s frankly all-too-often turgid, simplistic,  and doesn’t traverse the basic dialogue believability bar. And while we don’t expect to feel uplifted by the vicissitudes of the Bountiful FLDS, the mild depression you feel on the way out has less to do with a misguided, creepy and sometimes unlawful sect and its blinkered faithful, but with the sense that this is a well-intentioned, well-poised opportunity missed.

— Alan Kellogg

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The ultimate in home births: The Alien Baby Play, a Fringe review

Posted on August 19, 2018 by Liz Nicholls

Jessy Ardern in The Alien Baby Play, Impossible Mongoose. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The Alien Baby Play (Stage 3, Walterdale Theatre)

“Thank you so much for coming!” beams the cordial, slightly breathless woman we meet in The Alien Baby Play, the latest from Impossible Mongoose. “It means a lot you could come over….” She’s even made cookies.

We’re here to support Bethany in her hour of need. She’s 15 months pregnant, we’ve been invited to the birth, and tonight’s the night. The father will be on hand. And here’s the tricky (but intriguing) thing: he’s an alien.

Bethany, as she tells us, has had a devil of a time trying to figure out how overcome skepticism — even though the Virgin Mary set the precedent for impregnation by the other-worldly. She’s been battered by the prospect of disbelief, and thank god we are different!

Jessy Ardern fleshes out this theatrical premise — a character throwing herself on our mercy — in a dimensional performance that’s full of manic charm, and a kind of brisk forthright practical humour that’s well nigh irresistible. She’s a great performer.

And in Bethany she creates a memorable character up against the cosmic unknown, excitable, apprehensive about the future and yet somehow hopeful. The American playwright Nicholas Walker Herbert gives her a play to work with that opens up expands ease-fully into an odd, imaginative exploration of what it means to be an outsider in the world. And Corben Kushneryk’s Canadian premiere production gives her the room to breathe, to pause, and to reach out to connect with us, apparently on a one-on-one basis. Defences are futile when you’re at a home birth.

Bethany is a former Grade 3 teacher, with that kind of enthusiasm, who knows the value of a show-and-tell, a bulletin board, a pointer. Having retained her own, she values the “sense of wonder” in little kids, witness a devotion to the study ancient ruins visible only from the sky and impossible to explain in pragmatic terms.

The situation in which she finds herself in this oddball play is an invitation to elasticized, expansive thinking — about love, about being a parent, about being human. And it hits your heart in the strangest ways. 

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