“Who we were and who we are”: Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina), a beautiful and funny new musical. A Fringe review

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Jenny McKillop and Garett Ross in Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina) – a new musical, Plain Jane Theatre. Photo by Ryan Parker.

Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina) – a new musical

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The couple we meet in this wonderful new musical adaptation of Collin Doyle’s hit play Let The Light of Day Through — by the playwright and a remarkable young composer/songwriter Matt Graham — know what it’s like to live on the widening, scary fault line between “who we are” and “who we were.”

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Rob and Chris (Garett Ross and Jenny McKillop) were once Bobby and Tina, who fell in love in Grade 11, high school kids whose lives changed when Tina got pregnant. They had a baby even before they graduated. Now just in their 30s they’ve struggled to survive a fathomless grief by making themselves a comedy to be playful in. They try to amuse each other by arranging assignations for afternoon nookie in “sexy trashy” motels (standards: no bugs, no hair, no dead crack whores under the bed). And to keep the door to the past — the mystery room in their house and the great tragedy inside — closed, they wonder about starting again, “flying the coop,” selling their house, moving somewhere new. They think about how (and why) to keep being a couple when they’re different people now; does love wear itself out, long term, floundering in despair?

Rob and Chris play themselves at every stage of their relationship, as well as each other’s parents (they’re funny satirists), real estate agents, their kid Ben at many ages. I’m telling you all this first so you’ll appreciate the challenge involved in making a beautiful, funny, heartbreaking play into a beautiful, funny, heartbreaking musical. If you’re wondering if the musical theatre is up to this kind of complexity, wonder no more.

It’s in progress, as the creators have emphasized, as they cut and add songs. But Graham, a musical theatre songwriter of startling resourcefulness, who plays live at the keyboard, has a kind of fluency with complicated thoughts that turn witty in his lyrics. And they’re placed at meaningful moments. Motifs, including a silvery little riff that’s a pinch of memory perhaps, recur. Rob and Chris, turning over thoughts of moving to Montreal, or Florida!, get a fun and wry little Graham song about that.

The opening musical gambit, Prelude: The Door, is a little gem, portentous but with lightness. The recurring lullaby, gets increasingly poignant on each repetition. Would a song about going to university, when you have a baby and you’re living in your parents’ basement, be possible maybe?

Kate Ryan’s Plain Jane production, with its dramatic Trent Crosby lighting, stars two actors with powerfully convincing chemistry: Ross and McKillop are real-life husband and wife. McKillop is the more impulsive Chris; Ross has a kind of rueful, tentative quality that is the perfect complement.

Anyhow, these are first thoughts about a new musical that is open enough to include the arc attached to huge, life-changing heartbreak, with songs that approach obliquely, never a head-on assault in order to be moving, often with humour — just like Doyle’s writing.

Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina) is on its way. And the Fringe is for shows like that. You shouldn’t miss the chance to see it.

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‘We listen. We engage. We share’. Fun with absurdity in Bright Lights, a Fringe review

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Rachel Bowron, Jenny McKillop, Mhairi Berg, Oscar Derkx in Bright Lights, Blarney Productions at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo by Brianne Jang

Bright Lights (Stage 11, Varscona Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

A weekly support group for people who’ve had encounters with aliens operates under an earnest multi-limbed mantra: “this is a safe place. We’re here for you. We believe you. Your truth matters….” But in its sassy heart Bright Lights, a springloaded 2016 comedy by Kat Sandler (The Party and The Candidate), has a question for you. If push comes to shove (as it so often does in the contemporary world), how would you prove you’re an actual human and not an alien?

Asking the question, as Bright Lights does so hilariously, is an invitation to absurdity. And the comedy and the cast of Luc Tellier’s crack Blarney production relish the theatrical challenge of ever-so-gradually upping the ante, in ways that never stop seeming like fine-grained realism.

Mhairi Berg in Bright Lights, a Blarney production. Photo by Ryan Parker.

A newcomer to the group, — a performance nicely pitched by Mhairi Berg — arrives in response to a poster to share her experience of alien abduction that ends up with her sleeping in a field beside her car with all her clothes on backwards. You know, a classic. But the encounter includes a discovery that rocks the group. And the real fun of the piece is the interplay of idiosyncratic personalities, nailed with great comic pizzaz by Tellier’s first-rate cast.

Rachel Bowron is grim Dave, the fiercest of the group, a veteran of “quadruple alien probing” (the mind boggles), on perpetual red alert armed to the teeth for the coming war. Jenny McKillop is the daffy, conciliatory, and extremely pregnant Laurel. Particularly amusing is Oscar Derkx as Wayne, the ex-child star and full-time narcissist who constantly quotes the now-defunct TV series Junior Law. (“so help me law” is his favourite oath). He’s particularly infatuated with his own  psychic abilities. There’s a very funny glibness about Ross, the leader of the group, in Braydon Dowler Coltman’s performance. And, as catalyzed by the newcomer’s reported experience, they slide into overlapping conversation, and the absurdist reaches of argument, with escalating speed under Tellier’s direction.

Who can you trust? Can you believe where you don’t trust? Logic gets invoked, and foiled, at every turn; does it even work with “reality”?. Questions like that get lobbed lightly through the air of Bright Lights. And it’s all fun.

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An audacious juxtaposition of comedy and trauma: Stéphanie Morin-Robert: SOFT SPOT, a Fringe review

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Stéphanie Morin-Robert: SOFT SPOT, Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo supplied.

Stéphanie Morin-Robert: SOFT SPOT (Stage 17, Grindstone Comedy Theatre and Bistro)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

There is nothing timid or easily classifiable about this complex, boundary-testing comedy from the fearless, and very funny, Stéphanie Morin-Robert.

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The soft spot in question is a bruise. And as we know from Blindside and Eye Candy, she’s the kind of artist who isn’t afraid to squint at the bruise (with her one eye), laugh at it with us — and press it till it hurts and we gasp.

There are two intertwined stories at play in Soft Spot, one starring Morin-Robert’s party-hearty great grandpa, and one starring her own chaotic cross-border entry into the world of motherhood. So, it’s a genealogy of sorts, hung on a sort of karaoke framework. Partly it’s stand-up hilarity, of a particularly vivid sort. Morin-Robert, who lost one-eye to a childhood cancer and freely pops the glass one in and out, has a way with memorable stories about being at an ocularist conference in Texas (“like Burning Man” for people who make glass eyes for a living). We sing along, with gusto, to “now I’ve got you in my sights with these hungry eyes….”

Morin-Robert has evidently not seen a commonplace of propriety much less a taboo — sex, birth in its most visceral details, religion, parenthood — she could resist a comic tangle with. And there’s something about the delivery — her relaxed charm, her endearing confessional manner, the occasional eye roll, a sense that we’re sharing confidences and insights — that makes it all so engaging.

This is a show with a gut punch. And the audacity of it is the full weight she gives to comedy en route. I gather that this isn’t the final version of this audacious show; we the Fringe audience are there for us to test it with her (an exciting use of the festival). And I wonder if the shocking revelations about Grandpa, and heartfelt reflections on a toxic family inheritance don’t come just a bit late, in a show that is, quite literally, all about uncovering layers. But the ending has huge impact. This might be the bravest show at the Fringe. And it’s got to be one of the funniest.   

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SeaMAN: absurdism at sea, swimming for shore. A Fringe review

Posted on August 16, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

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.

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Edmonton’s biggest opening night: the Fringe starts tonight

Posted on August 15, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

The Dancing Donairs in Alison Wunderland, Mermaid Entertainment at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo by Darla Woodley

Forest of Truth, Theatre Group GUMBO, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Tonight’s the night!  Edmonton’s biggest opening night. Do not be dismayed, or paralyzed, by the 216-show 38-venue dimensions of the 43rd annual incarnation of our big summer theatre bash.

Gordon’s Big Bald Head, the stunningly expert improv trio of Mark Meer, Ron Pederson and Jacob Banigan, aren’t. As always, they will undertake to improvise their own version of any show in the Fringe program. This year’s edition of their show (at the Varscona)? The Art of the Steal.

Take your cue on fringing from Gordon’s Big Bald Head. Go boldly forth. Experiment. Do not be smoked out by the choices (bring a mask, head indoors into a theatre, see a show).

Have you had a chance to cast an eye on 12thnight’s selection of intriguing prospects here, and further thoughts here. I haven’t seen them either, so we’ll be Finding Our Fringes together. In the lineup at Find Your Fringe there are shows I’ve seen and enjoyed, either at previous Fringes or even during the season. Here are four. They might well have been adjusted, reworked, amplified, edited, since last time out. That is, after all, what artists do, and it’s what the Fringe is for.

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Alison Wunderland. I saw this kooky musical comedy by Aimée Beaudoin and Jeff Halaby during the season at Spotlight Cabaret, where it sold out every show. Once you’ve seen the Dancing Donairs, you will never be able to unsee them. For the Fringe Alison, whose career goal is to be an influencer, follows the Whyte Rabbit over to a larger, more formal, venue the Garneau Theatre (“there’s room for all our stuff!” exults Beaudoin). There’ll have to be changes in stagecraft, of course, but expect a cast of four to dig, exuberantly, into a wide swath of pop music, Rolling Stones to Fleetwood Mac, Rihanna to Grace Slick. Here’s my review.

Rat Academy, Batrabbit Productions, Edmonton Fringe 2023

Rat Academy. The hit show, by and starring Dayna Lea Hoffmann and Katie Yoner, a captivating little gem of clown comedy, expertly imagines the world as seen through the eyes of the ultimate outsiders, rats in a rat-free province. The interplay between the pair, one worldly and one innocent, is precisely maintained, and hilarious. It was at last summer’s Fringe, and has been touring ever since. Here’s my review.

Forest of Truth. This show, from Osaka’s Theatre Group GUMBO, is a veritable barrage of theatrical weirdness. Nothing about this hallucinogenic woodland clown fairytale — all about love — thinks small. Or quiet. Or stationary. Bonkers. The fringiest of Fringe experiences. Here’s my review.    

Larry. Candy Roberts’s fearless solo clown show, at the 2019 Fringe and back in 2022, is back. A satire of macho dude-ism that turns out to be unexpectedly more, introduces us to the title bro, who’s dipping into a new thing, self-improvement — with hilarious, and touching, results. Here’s my review, now five years old (my, how time flies).

Stay tuned to 12thnight.ca for Fringe reviews, starting tonight. I’m really hoping you’ll be able to chip in a monthly sum, no matter how modest, to my Patreon campaign to support theatre coverage on this free (so far) independent site. It’s supported entirely by readers. Click here. 

    

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Find Your Fringe: further thoughts on what to see, from 12thnight

Posted on August 14, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Adam Francis Proulx and friends in Emilio’s A Million Chameleons, The Pucking Fuppet Co. at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo

638 Ways To Kill Casto, Vault Theatre at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo by Spenser Kells.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

It’s the eve of the 43rd annual Edmonton International Fringe Theatre festival. And you have 216 shows in 38 venues to choose from. Don’t be daunted, be pumped. Be curious as you dive into the Fringe multi-verse.

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Did you have a peek at 12thnight’s selection of intriguing prospects here, to get you started on your Fringe quest? It’s here. And here are some further thoughts for Finding Your Fringe.

A new play by a young playwright. It’s what we all want to find at the Fringe. And here’s one with an unusual dark comedy/satire premise. 638 Ways To Kill Castro by actor/playwright Sebastian Ley caught my eye. It’s the ‘70s, and here’s the thing: Can a team of four bumbling CIA agents — code name Operation Mongoose — accomplish what 15 years of assassination attempts have failed to deliver?

“I came up with the idea years ago when I was at Studio 58, after reading a great Politico article about the assassination attempts,” says Ley. “I found that the real-life stories were almost more absurd than anything I could come up with, including exploding seashells, cigar bombs, botulism-filled diving suits, boots to make his beard fall out, and of course psychic warfare.”

For Ley, the recurring question was “what kind of bizarre people would come up with such crazy ideas to assassinate someone?” We’re about to find out. The core of the plot is “the interpersonal relationships and awkward personalities of the four agents….” He summarizes the theme: “I’d say the show is about nepotism, unchecked governments, and what it means to be a hero. A good stylistic comparison would be (the movie) The Death of Stalin.

The cast assembled by innovative director Kathleen Weiss includes Samuel Bronson, David Ley, Sebastian Ley, and Patrick Lynn. Yup, two Leys: the last time David and Sebastian, father and son, were onstage together at the Fringe was in David Mamet’s A Life in the Theatre in 2019.

Amabano y’inka at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo supplied.

Populating the stage. There are a lot of one-person shows at the Fringe, to be sure. The Fringe’s only show ever from Burundi (I’m pretty sure) is Amabano y’inka, an acrobatic traditional dance from the Burundian province of Makamba — with a high-energy cast of 18. High School Musical, which premiered on the Disney Channel in 2006 and has been a hit onstage and screen ever since (including meta versions that have high school kids auditioning to be in High School Musical) has a 13-member cast. And, hey, that number includes the great musical theatre guru Linette Smith herself! An antidote to every Fringe play you’ve ever seen that wonders aloud how anyone ever survives the endless nightmare miseries of high school.    

A new venue. Fringe shows of every description have long rehearsed downtown at the Citadel, Edmonton’s largest theatre. But the only Fringe show ever to actually play the mighty Citadel, as a BYOV, happens this year. Bull by the Brit playwright/ screenwriter/ satirist Mike Bartlett (and a companion piece to Cock), is an eviscerating attack on the corporate culture, a disturbing office power play that gets nastier and nastier. That it’s billed as “site-specific” and happens in the Citadel Boardroom (Stage 38) is satire in itself. Director Jake Planinc, who has an MFA in directing from the U of A  and a group of like minded U of A theatre grads to direct says Bull falls into the repertoire he favours — plays that lean into realism, and are “actor/dialogue-centric, fast” says that the Citadel “are very excited to have a Fringe show in the building.”

Sue Huff and Kevin Tokarsky in I, Diana, Northern Sabbatical Productions at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo by Axel Torres.

Custom-made. The Fringe is a hotbed of “creation theatre,” custom-made by artists to perform themselves. With I, Diana playwright Linda Wood Edwards (Spring Alibi, True Grid) has created a comedy/drama for other people, to wit the husband-and-wife team of Sue Huff and Kevin Tokarsky. I, Diana draws a bead on relationships and marriage from the unexpected angle of an independent goddess, a serial spouse, who operates on the narcissist’s code. Intriguing that it’s “inspired by real life prairie events,” as billed.

Adam Francis Proulx in Emilio’s A Million Chameleons, The Pucking Fuppet Co. Photo supplied

OK, you’re in love with puppetry (and occasionally wonder if you might be a puppet yourself). If you caught sight of Adam Francis Proulx’s brilliant, ingenious, (and bonkers) one-man all-crow murder mystery last summer, The Family Crow: A Murder Mystery, you (like me) will be very attracted to the cross-species return of this virtuoso puppeteer/ playwright. Emilo’s A Million Chameleons concerns the volatile fortunes of the title impresario who tours the world with his celebrated chameleon circus.

The Flying Doctor, Empress of Blandings at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo supplied.

Reinventing the classics. The Indie troupe Empress of Blandings is all about reimagining the classic repertoire for young, fleet, contemporary. They celebrate their 10th anniversary with a Fringe revival of their very first production, Celia Taylor’s original translation of the Molière comedy The Flying Doctor.

Tell me a story. The Fringe circuit has always attracted great storytellers. Three of the best have returned for Find Your Fringe with new shows. And it’s perhaps no coincident that, in this bizarre and chaotic post-truth world in which we find ourselves, two are actually about lies. Martin Dockery: Truth, which brings back to town the wry, sly Brooklyn-based storyteller, is one. The puckish and genial tall-tale Kentuckian yarn-spinner Paul Strickland, an heir to the Mark Twain tradition, is another. The image of the “implied garden” at the Big Fib Trailer Park from his show Ain’t True & Uncle False, lingers in the mind. His new show? 1nce Upon A Lie: Paul Strickland. The third, the Australian storyteller Jon Bennett (Fire In The Meth Lab), has actually moved to the U.S., target of his comedic barbs in the past. In Jon Bennett: Ameri-can’t,  he will have to account for himself.

The Bells, Orpheum Productions at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo supplied.

Reimagining the musical theatre. It’s kind of awe-inspiring that Fringe artists continue to experiment with the demands of music as a way of storytelling onstage. Here are a couple of new ones. With The Bells, for example, emerging Edmonton artists Cassie Hyman and Eli Gusdal have created a folk/blues musical exploring the world of the Brontë siblings, “cradle to casket.” And they’re testing it out at the Fringe.

Let’s Not Turn On Each Other, Walters and Watt at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo supplied.

The team of Jacquelin Walters and Michael Watt, creators of last year’s highly original folk musical What Was Is All, is back with a new “play with music.” In Let’s Not Turn On Each Other, two outcasts from a cult have been surviving in the wilderness awaiting a sign from the “divine leader,” when “a discovery” inspires a relocation, and a musical pilgrimage. Watt calls their chosen musical style “theatrical folk music.” The new “play with music” is of a similar style to the music of What Was Is All, but if it were written by clowns.”

Eleanor’s Story: Life After War, by and starring Ingrid Garner at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo supplied.

And now the sequel. Eleanor’s Story: An American Girl in Hitler’s Germany, Ingrid Garner’s affecting and vivid hit solo show culled from her grandmother’s memoir, toured the Fringe circuits world-wide for many years. It was a fascinating vision of war-time Berlin seen through the innocent eyes of a little girl. Now Garner has fashioned a sequel, in which Eleanor, now 16, returns home to the U.S. after seven years. How will she negotiate American high school after the memories that haunt her?

For a full schedule, show annotations, changes and updates, and tickets: fringetheatre.ca.   

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Play into musical: risk-takers at the Fringe. Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina) – A New Musical

Posted on August 12, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Whenever you wonder if the Fringe losing its experimental zest, along comes a project that embraces the original risk-taker’s proposition of the festival. A show that’s all about having a bright idea rather than a finished theatrical product, exploring a possibility to see if it might work and take hold with an audience, changing it on the fly. 

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This is the story of an award-winning playwright and a startlingly accomplished young composer who’d never met: how Collin Doyle and Matt Graham got together to create a new musical.   

At least by the modest disclaimer of half this new musical-writing team, there is a certain improbability attached to Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina). “I always claim I don’t like musicals. But when I go to them I really enjoy them,” says playwright Doyle. “I have no musical talent whatsoever,” he declares. “I don’t know how you make musicals. And I have no ear.”

But somehow, for reasons he can’t quite explain, the idea came to him of making his 2012 play Let The Light Of Day Through, which premiered at Theatre Network, into a musical.

This is a trickier proposition than it might seem. For one thing, how many two-character musicals are there in the musical theatre repertoire? OK, start with Jason Robert Brown’s The Last Five Years, and after that, we all have to give our brains a squeeze. The structure of Doyle’s funny, heartbreaking play is built on “two characters trying to create the world onstage.” They play their younger selves, and everyone else, too, at various times past and present.

Jenny McKillop and Garett Ross in Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina – a new musical, Plain Jane Theatre. Photo by Ryan Parker.

Rob and Chris are a married couple of two decades standing. They were high school sweethearts, each other’s first love, whose world changed when Chris got pregnant before they even graduated. And now in order to close the door — and keep it closed — on a great tragedy they’ve reinvented themselves. They’ve created for themselves new characters to be, in a playful world of denial, a sort of comedy where they have assignations for sex in trashy motels. Can that door to a painful past and a haunted room stay closed? They’re not the same people any more. Will they stay together? Should they? “Who are we now?” one asks.

When he got the idea of making Let The Light Of Day Through into a musical, Doyle approached Kate Ryan, the artistic director of Plain Jane Theatre and a musical theatre expert, for advice. An exciting prospect, she thought. “It’s such a strong piece rhythmically. So many twists and turns. Dynamically, so heightened: tragedy, passion, all the extremes of life…. I think Collin just wanted it to be elevated musically.”

Ryan asked him if he wanted a sound designer or a score. And when it was the latter, she instantly thought of pairing him with the 20something songwriter/lyricist Graham. “I thought Collin would really admire and understand my friend…. Just like Collin, Matt is an unedited kinda guy — exuberant, kinda joyous, optimistic, highly sensitive, highly aware of the huge downs and ups of life. They both get it; they’re both unafraid to talk about it. Head-smart and heart-smart.”

Ryan found compatibility in their mutual understanding that “what can be so painful one moment can be hilarious the next,” a quality that’s such a part of Doyle’s dialogue in all his plays. She laughs, “Matt and Collin even speak the same way.” Which is to say in loops, as Ryan says, trying to re-create a typical conversation. “I think it’s this (pause), but it might be that…. But I’m thinking we have something here. What do you think it is? I dunno…. Cool. Let me play with it.”

Graham was just finishing an MFA in musical theatre creation at the Tisch School of the Arts at NYU. But Edmonton audiences had seen his work before then, as a musical director (Ryan’s production of The Drowsy Chaperone for the Citadel Young Company, for example) and as a songwriter. His beautiful song In Fifty Years, a reflection on the uncertainties of the future, was part of Plain Jane’s 2020 COVID revue Scenes From The Sidewalk.

Graham had written musicals before, including the 2018 Marnie Day with his friend Sue Goberdhan (the co-artistic producer of Azimuth Theatre). That musical’s finale number, “we don’t have forever, but let’s have a go,” was part of Scenes From The Sidewalk II.

The three had their first meetings in the winter when Graham was in New York, wrapping up performing on an Off-Broadway musical BARBA: A Brazilian Body Percussion Musical. “We Zoomed in to Matt’s bedroom/ recording studio,” says Ryan. And since it was always late-night, they tried their best to create quietly. “He was renting a tiny room, and his desk was under his elevated bed, the top half of bunk beds. That’s where he worked.”

“We’ve learned how to work together,” says Doyle of his new creative partnership. “And I’ve really loved it. He’s such a positive guy, super-talented! When he sends me the songs he’s working on, it’s like getting Christmas presents…. A lot of the time it’s me staying out of his way.”

“Matt really locked into the structure of the play,” says the playwright. Graham turned the first scene, in which the characters hook up in a motel, into a song, The Plan Is… now called (at the moment) The Pizza Boy Fantasy. Some of the original dialogue became lyrics; sometimes Graham’s lyrics are originals. The song Public Property is spun from a line in the play.

Since Graham is here from New York for the summer, he and Doyle can be a musical-writing team in person. “He lives a five-minute bike ride away from me,” says the latter happily.

Doing the Fringe was Ryan’s idea. And it’s given them a deadline (“I panicked,” says Doyle), and access to an empathetic audience to help them find out what it is they have. “This is us, using the safety of the Fringe. We’re taking a risk, and we don’t know how it’ll turn out,” he says candidly. “For the audience it’s an invitation to come and take this risk with us… This won’t be the final product. But this is the journey….”

They’re adding, changing, editing, all the time, which is bound to be a challenge for Ryan’s cast, Jenny McKillop and Garett Ross. Last week Doyle said “one song we haven’t finished yet; one song we just finished today…. But hey, we finally have a script! With proper numbered pages.”

And, Ryan laughs, “we do have an actual door.” It’s borrowed for the occasion from Teatro Live!’s recent production of Private Lives. And since it’s withstood a barrage of slamming, it’s good and solid. That’s something to rely on.

Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina) – A New Musical opens Friday at the Fringe, Stage 11. Tickets: fringetheatre.ca.   

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What to see at Find Your Fringe: some thoughts to get you started

Posted on August 10, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Rachel Bowron. Jenny McKillop, Mhairi Berg, Oscar Derkx in Bright Lights, Barney Productions. Photo by Brianne Jang.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The Fringe is back, starting Thursday, in the town where the continent’s fringe phenom began. Yup, the biggest and oldest Fringe festival on the continent is a bona fide grassroots Edmonton invention, crazy, improbable, irresistible. And things here are about to get a whole lot livelier and more exciting.

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In this its 43rd summer, the 216-show Fringe show universe, with its contingent of 1,600-plus artists from 11 countries, is your wonderland. Do not be daunted by size; instead, be curious. Experiment: that’s what artists have been doing to get here. And, after all, there’s no wrong way to Fringe — except to not see a show.

So, what looks promising? Intriguing? Just too weird to resist?

Just for starters, here’s a quick preliminary survey of a dozen shows that caught my eye — for the premise or the playwright, the play or the company, the director, the cast, or the extreme probability that you’ll never have seen anything like it. I haven’t seen any of these either, so we’re on the Finding mission together. Stay tuned for companion pieces and more suggestions)

Mhairi Berg in Bright Lights, a Blarney production. Photo by Ryan Parker.

Bright Lights. Actor/educator Luc Tellier has assembled an all-star cast — Rachel Bowron, Jenny McKillop, Oscar Derkx, Braydon Dowler-Coltman, Mhairi Berg,  — for the return of Blarney Productions and his own return to directing after Legoland in 2017. More about this anon, but the comedy is by Kat Sandler, who in 2019 at the Citadel put the running back into running time with a logistical challenge it hadn’t seen before or since in The Candidate and The Party  — and not coincidentally put the running back into running time, in a big way. Anyhow, this Sandler comedy, at hit at the 2016 Toronto Fringe, is set in a support group for people who have had alien encounters. She’s a witty, smart writer, so I’m up for this.

 SeaMAN. Portland’s Amica Hunter gets a gold star for unconventional entrance of the festival at the 2023 Fringe. In Anatomica, a weird solo performance art comedy (for want of a better term), they entered scooching backwards, legs only no arms, and the evolutionary spiral goes down from there. Hunter is back with a Florida artist of similar weirdness quotient, Bruce Ryan Costella, in a “1-man show – by 2.” It’s a “revenge-fuelled venture” as billed, and both performers play the old salt. How could this possibly work onstage? Intriguing.   

Jenny McKillop and Garett Ross in Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina – a new musical, Plain Jane Theatre. Photo by Ryan Parker.

Rob and Chris (Bobby +Tina) – A New Musical. It’s been a decade since Collin Doyle’s Let The Light of Day Through, the Alberta Playwriting Competition winner of 2012, premiered at Theatre Network. A couple with a great burden of sorrow and guilt have fashioned themselves a comedy to be in. And somehow, with the  assistance of Plain Jane artistic director Kate Ryan, this memorably complex, funny, and heartbreaking play, is in the process of becoming a musical More about this exciting (and ongoing) experiment in musical theatre writing in an upcoming 12thnight.ca post. It’s a collaboration between the playwright and the superlative young composer/lyricist Matt Graham.

Accidental Beach: A Previously Improvised Musical, Grindstone Theatre. Photo supplied.

Accidental Beach: A Previously Improvised Musical. You can’t get more local than this new musical from Grindstone, the theatre that unleashed the musical satire Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer on the world. Like “Edmonton’s hot new beach” itself, there’s a big splash of the fortuitous that’s gone into Accidental Beach. It was the “Life’s A Beach “episode of The 11 O’Clock Number, Grindstone’s weekly all-improvised musicals (which are an amazing achievement in improv, needless to say). “We recorded it, and it’s here verbatim,” laughs artistic director Byron Martin.

Ingi’s Fingies. If you were mesmerized by Epidermis Circus last year, you will have been struck by the ingenuity, precision physicality  and macabre sense of humour attached to Ingrid Hansen’s original kind of puppetry. It’s a hands-on affair if ever there was one. Fingers, mirror images, tiny found objects…. one of the lingering images is a sinister baby, Baby Tyler, who paid homage to vintage vaudeville by taking a bath onstage. Oh-oh, Tyler, that worldly infant with the sly look, is back (trailing Off-Broadway raves) to star in a new, this time all-ages, show from Victoria-based SNAFU Society of Unexpected Spectacle. SNAFU manager Lauren Ball calls it “less spicy than Epidermis Circus, “but just as weird.”

Baby Tyler in Ingi’s Fingies, SNAFU. Photo supplied.

Mass Debating. Trevor Schmidt, whose coming-of-age girl-bonding comedy Robot Girls was one of the delights of this past season, has written highly unusual musicals before now, with an array of creative collaborators (among them, Two-Headed/ Half-Hearted with Kaeley Jade Wiebe, Klondykes with Darrin Hagen). This new one, music by Mason Snelgrove, heads for Catholic school, and takes us to “the 1973 Catholic Mass Debating Championship Finals.” Will the St Sebastian’s School For Privileged Boys retain their grip on the Heart of Jesus Trophy Cup. Schmidt himself is in the production he directs, along with five other top-drawer comic actor/singers (Michelle Todd, Jason Hardwick, Cheryl Jameson, Kristin Johnston, Jake Tkaczyk). The company? 100% More Girls. Take that Sister Act, and hang on to your rosary.

Jayce McKenzie, Center of the Universe. Photo supplied.

Center of the Universe.  Her crackling darkly comic performances as off-centre kids, disturbed or prescient, troubled or smart (Candy & The Beast, Robot Girls) have made her an Edmonton theatre star. Now Jayce McKenzie has turned playwright, tapping her own experience for a solo comedy, in which she plays a 13-year-old undiagnosed ADHD’er.

Local Diva: the Danielle Smith Diaries. In a political climate where  “freedom” has come to mean, increasingly, the “freedom” to curtail other people’s human rights — and plays with a sharp, specific political edge are not thick upon the ground — here’s a bold one. The protagonist of Liam Salmon’s solo play, which started life as a podcast in the 2020 Alberta Queer Calendar Project, is a drag diva with a story to tell. Growing up gay on the prairies is a traumatizing experience for starters: Catholic school, the drag circuit where queerness is highly visible, two UCP elections … no shortage of dramatic conflict, to put it mildly. “Drag is political; it just is,” says Salmon (Subscribe Or Like, Fags In Space). They describe their  protagonist Tragidean as “a really flawed, difficult character,” dimensionally human. “Queerness has been here forever,” but it’s increasingly under attack. Statuesque Zachary Parsons-Lozinski aka Lilith Fair, a magnetic performer (The Pansy Cabaret, With Bells On), stars; Owen Holloway co-produces and directs.   

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

Erika The Red. Vancouver’s much-travelled Monster Theatre, history junkies who’ve turned their wits to such modest little projects as “every story ever told,” the complete history Canada in 60 minutes, War and Peace got fascinated by … Vikings. The star of this “epic one-woman Viking saga,” charismatic Tara Travis (half the creative/performing team of The Spinsters), is back at the Edmonton Fringe for the first time since her solo murder mystery Who Killed Gertrude Crump?. Travis, a Monster associate since 1999, explains that DNA testing on an impressive Viking grave proved that its occupant, intriguingly, was a woman. “This is our imagining of who she was and who she came to be,” says Travis of our heroine, bent on revenge when her village is burned to the ground. “It’s the most technically ambitious Fringe show we’ve ever done,” co-written with Monster’s Ryan Gladstone. Expect complicated projections. Travis, meanwhile, is crossing the Rockies in a car full of Viking weapons. Check out the droll mockumentary on the Monster website.

LeTabby Lexington in Golden Grind, House of Hush. Photo by Brennan Roy.

Golden Grind: A Hollywood Burlesque Show. Burlesque, with its playful humour and presentational pizzaz, and theatre have long had a flexible open marriage in Edmonton (think of those Send in the Girls shows wth Henry VIII’s wives or the Bronte sisters). Intriguingly House of Hush Burlesque has enlisted actor/ improviser Kristi Hansen to write, and host, this homage to Golden Age of Hollywood stars like Dorothy Dandridge, Marilyn Monroe, Mae West…. “I was inspired by Violette (Violette Coquette who co-directs with Delia Barnett), who’s doing her PhD in burlesque performance,” says Hansen. She plays film studies PhD student Luster Kitten (a salute to Buster), and “Golden Grind is my powerpoint, my thesis, come to life.”

Hansen’s own historical researches have revealed that “women and gender diverse folks were not treated as well as they should have been,” exploitation embedded in the double-sided title. “I’m a big fan of burlesque,” Hansen says, “the improvisational aspects, the tongue-in-cheek, the performance….”

Ha Ha da Vinci. In this evidently unclassifiable solo show, with illusions, magic, music, and theatrical effects  from Port Townsend-based Phinia Pipia, a grad student finds herself transplanted to renaissance Italy in da Vinci’s time machine. A tuba is involved; it had me at “a tuba lights the way.”

Rebecca Merkley in Satan Does A Cabaret, Dammitammy Productions. Photo by Brianne Jang

Satan Does A Cabaret. You may have seen Jesus H (for Hardcore) Christ who showed up last year, all big hair and Crocs, rocking out as the substitute teacher in our Grade 2 class at the Christian Bible Assembly. The creator and star of Jesus Teaches Us Things, quick-witted Rebecca Merkley, is back. Satan, fresh from a hot tour of Georgia, has commandeered an open mic night at a local coffee house for an evening of song, dance, poetry and, you know, damnation. Satan shares the stage with live musician Shayne Ewasiuk. Says Merkley, there are six songs from the 90s to the mid-2000s. “Let’s face it, Satan is a millennial.” 

I leave you (temporarily) with three premises with which to tease your mind. The Silence of the Lambs Jr. (for kids, but with an “adult language and content” warning). What? Syster och Bror Bygga IKEA (Sister and Brother Build IKEA!). As a setting for family dysfunction nothing beats building an IKEA night table together, right? And this one, either inspired or terrible: Who’s Afraid of Winnie The Pooh? Once you think of “Winnie and Piglet having the new couple over for drinks,” you just can’t unthink it. Which is a reason to go and find out more. It arrives here (from Minneapolis), with buzz.

Shows, tickets, schedules: all at fringetheatre.ca.

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Find Your Fringe and get your tickets: they’re on sale today at noon

Posted on August 7, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Amazingly, it’s August. And Find Your Fringe has found you, fellow Fringe adventurers.

Find Your Fringe, the 43rd annual edition of the Edmonton International Fringe Theatre Festival.

Tickets go on sale at noon today for the 43rd annual edition of Edmonton’s international summer theatre extravaganza, the continent’s biggest and oldest Fringe (Aug. 15 to 25). The routes through the 216-indoor show universe of this year’s Fringe are yours to discover — no, create — as they’ve always been in this Edmonton invention that transformed fringe from noun to (very) active verb. And there’s more than one road to tickets, too.

You can order them online at fringetheatre.ca (and get e-tickets in your inbox). You can call (780-409-1910). You can show up in person at the Fringe’s central box office at Fringe HQ in the Fringe Theatre Arts Barns (10330 84 Ave.) or the EAC (Edmonton Arts Council) shop and service outlet downtown (9930 102 Ave.). And when the festivities start, you can also pick up tickets at a couple of other Fringe box offices — 83rd Ave. and 104th St. next to ATB (aka the Gazebo) Park, or at La Cité francophone (8627 91 St.) in the French Quarter. Note, there isn’t a Fringe box office at Theatre Network this year.

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After many years in a holding pattern, the top ticket price went up by 2 bucks last summer. It’s up again by a toonie this summer, to $20 (the prices you see in the program are all-inclusive). Fringe artists set their own ticket price, to a $15 max, and take home 100 per cent of ticket sales. And the festival collects a service fee on top. In a year of struggle for the arts (critical escalation of production costs and dwindling sponsorships), the Fringe’s per ticket service fee is $5 max (up from last year’s $3) on a top-price $15 ticket. For ticket prices that are less, the Fringe’s service fee is reduced too,  and can be as little as $2 depending on the ticket price selected by artists, according to Fringe organizers.

As you’ll see from the program, either online or in glorious 3—D i(n the $15 152-page high-gloss Fringe guide), most artists have opted for the $20 max. And who can blame them? But there are exceptions. Tickets for Linda Wood Edwards’ new comedy/drama I, Diana are $18 (students and seniors $12), for example; for Spin Cycle $12. The Empress of Blandings’ anniversary production of the Moliere comedy The Flying Doctor is $15 (with $10 tickets for students and seniors). And of the four shows at the “young audiences” venue, the Edmonton Public Library Strathcona Branch, three have a top price less than $20.

The best deal for the bargain Fringe explorer is the Frequent Fringer pass ($160 for 10 tickets) and the Double Fringer pass ($320 for 20 tickets). But they get snapped up in a blink, so hustle is required. Many shows offer discounts for seniors and students. And there are daily discounts too, as determined by artists (the sales are in-person only, but check out the available discounted shows on the day at fringetheatre.ca. And here’s something new: the $20 Champion Pass. Once you buy one (online, in person, or on the phone) you get $5 off a full-price ticket to performances that opt into the program (identifiable by a Fringe badge on their website show image). So it pays for itself after four Champion performances.   

You’ll be Finding your Fringe and “doing it your way,” as the theme puts it alluringly, in a profusion of choices. The 216 ticketed shows are to be found in 38 venues, 10 of them official Fringe theatres programmed by lottery (up from 8 last year), and 28 of them BYOVs, bring-your-own-venues acquired and outfitted by artists themselves. As with the number of shows (last year 185) this is palpable growth, but not a wild topsy-turvy escalation from the year before (Fringe Theatre executive director Megan Dart has talked before of “incremental growth” and this seems like an example).

The two new additions to the Fringe’s roster of official lottery-programmed venues have both been festival venues in summers of yore. One is the Strathcona library, now the “young audiences” destination, mere steps away from the central Fringe box office. The other is the Granite Curling Club, the new home of the Fringe’s own invariably sold-out Late Night Cabaret. For 13 years, this hit midnight show, different every night, has been turning insomniac Fringers away at the Backstage Theatre. This move to a larger venue is, quite literally, by popular demand.

You can find Fringe shows in actual theatres, among them Fringe Theatre’s Backstage, Studio, and Westbury; the Varscona; the Gateway; Walterdale; Theatre Network’s Nancy Power mainstage; Rapid Fire’s Exchange Theatre. But many of the venues have other lives, as bars or dance clubs, churches, auditoriums, cabarets. There’s even a show (Sherlock Holmes Experience: The Incendiary Incident) that sends you forth from the Fringe’s garbage container, 221B Baker Street.

The artist-run BYOVs are mostly, but not all, in Old Strathcona. Three are across the river downtown, for example: CKUA, Evolution Wonderlounge, and (no kidding), the Citadel boardroom.

There’s a cluster of four Fringe “theatres” in the French Quarter, with 29 shows among them inside La Cité francophone and across the street at Campus Saint-Jean (hold this tantalizing thought: Le Café bicyclette). The Grindstone Comedy Club, a crazily busy little venue on 81 Ave., has curated a 32-show Fringe presence happening in four venues, including the Luther Centre across the street and Mile Zero’s Dance headquarters. Strathcona’s Holy Trinity Church houses 15 shows in its three BYOV venues.

Starting Friday August 16, the KidsFringe is back in Light Horse Park (10325 84 Ave.), with all sorts of activities and shows for the under-12 set and their grown-up companions. It’s curated by the indefatigable Alyson Dicey of Girl Brain. And it’s all free. Check out the schedule and show descriptions in the program.

There are outdoor performances. There’s a music series on the ATB outdoor stage (aka the Gazebo Park), on both Fringe weekends at 9 and 10 p.m., curated by the indie star Lindsey Walker. There are (as if it needed saying) beer tents. Tthe Fringe’s official beer? Sea Change.

Which brings us to the eternal Fringe question, the one that never loses its lustre. What to see? It is, of course, your Fringe To Find. But 12thnight.ca can help with that. Stay tuned to this site for encouragement, suggestions, previews, features, and reviews.

And if you enjoy the theatre coverage on my free (so far) and independent site 12thnight.ca worthwhile and entertaining, I am really hoping you’ll be able to chip in to my ongoing Patreon campaign, with a monthly contribution, no matter how modest, to support its continuation. 12thnight.ca is solely supported by its readers. Click here.

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How did it all go wrong? Civil Blood: A Treaty Story, a review

Posted on July 28, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Civil Blood: A Treaty Story, Thou Art Here Theatre. Photo by Mat Simpson

By Liz NIcholls, 12thnight.ca

On a sunny afternoon in the Edmonton river valley, the old Fort looks positively benign. And when we gather in the courtyard for a performance of Civil Blood: A Treaty Story, happy endings, love stories, alliances, the reconciliation of opposing forces … all seem possible.

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It the inspiration of Anishinaabe playwright (and storyteller and producer) Josh Languedoc and his co-creator Neil Kuefler to take us to the evening of September 9, 1876. Civil Blood reimagines the high-test moment and the lead-up to the signing of Treaty 6, which pertains to the land on which we live. And, like the Indigenous and settler characters of Kuefler and Mark Vetch’s Thou Art Here Theatre production, we are divided. We have to choose between two different narratives and their perspectives, intertwined but separate, through Languedoc’s ambitious double-routed play.

Maria Buffalo in Civil Blood: A Treaty Story, Thou Art Here Theatre. Photo by Mat Simpson
Tre

You can follow the Indigenous-led track of Nehiyaw huntress Ekah (Emily Berard), or you can follow Lily (Christina Nguyen), a Euro idealist recently arrived in the West and discovering for herself its complex realities. I picked the former track, and (not coincidentally) we were led just outside the Fort. We arrived at a teepee with a welcoming white-clad Indigenous figure Takah (Maria Buffalo). In a production clad in earth-tones, there she was, in dazzling white, with a white feather in her hair. Was she a benevolent ghost from the ancestral world present on behalf of the continuity principle? A stalwart angel? A dream spirit? I’m not too sure. But she shepherded us through a variety of locations, and watched us watching.

There’s tension in the Indigenous camp, where privations — the settler incursions on traditional hunting lands, the disappearance of the buffalo, whiskey, disease — are taking their toll. The chief (Dylan Thomas-Bouchier) and his sister Ekah (Berard) are deeply distrustful of the olive branch extended by Governor Sampson, in the form of a peace treaty, with a dinner and dance to gild the lily. Are generosity and charity any substitute for equality? The Indigenous track of Civil Blood says no. The chief’s exuberant mama (Rebecca Bissonnette) is more conciliatory, and open to collaboration. Or maybe she’s just practical, given the dark undercurrent that the resistance to signing the treaty will, in the end, be futile anyway against mighty colonial power.

The ominous title of the piece is borrowed from the prologue to Romeo and Juliet (“civil blood makes civil hands unclean”), which sets forth the “ancient grudge” and “new mutiny” of that brouhaha in Verona. And from the tensions of Civil Blood, a Romeo and Juliet love story of star-cross’d lovers emerges: Ekah and Julian (Gabriel Richardson), a French-speaking philosophy scholar, are separated by the great colonial divide. And the arrival of Lily, the daughter of Governor Sampson (Doug Mertz), intrigued by this new adventure (and by Julian) complicates the love story still further.

It’s a volatile world they live in. And Berard and Richardson, both excellent, have a fine-tuned scene in which he attempts to rekindle their smouldering relationship, overcoming her wariness with his ardour.

Ivy DeGagné, Colby Stockdale, Emily Berard in Civil Blood: A Treaty Story, Thou Art Here Theatre. Photo by Mat Simpson

Julian’s vivacious and curious little sister Pauline (delightfully played by Ivy DeGagné) is one go-between, who’s embraced the duality of her environment and is learning Cree. And the lively Métis character Kahkakis (Colby Stockdale), who has a teasing brother-sister friendship with Ekah, is another. The two tracks intersect, along with Métis sashes, at the celebratory dinner and bi-cultural dance (choreographed by Rebecca Sadowski).

The preamble to the Treaty, as the play sets forth vividly, is not without people of good will. But by the time the play’s two tracks intersect once more and fatally, at the end, it’s all going wrong. And the fracture lines in the peace treaty are violently evident. The church, via the presence of a fiery racist priest, Father Gabriel (Cody Porter, who digs into the role), is an instigator. And you assume that light is shed on his viciousness in the play’s other track.

Rebecca Bissonnette, Dylan Thomas-Bouchier, Emily Berard in Civil Blood: A Treaty Story, Thou Art Here Theatre. Photo by Mat Simpson

Civil Blood wonders about the built-in power inequalities of a peace treaty in which the land isn’t shared and interpretation and enforcement reside on one side alone. The Nehiyaw are up against it when they sign. There’s a curse, there’s talk of “cages” and “fire that will never be put out.” All of that resonates with us, and in multiple ways (including this past week’s tragic reminders of our lethal inattention to the natural world).     

The 90-minute “traffic of our stage” sets about unspooling back from the present moment, and the dishonourable subterfuges of “reconciliation” to a crucial moment in our history. We know how the story has worked itself out in 2024. Did it have to be that way?

It seems important to ponder that (and from two perspectives). And Civil Blood take us on location.

REVIEW

Civil Blood: A Treaty Story

Theatre: Thou Art Here Theatre, co-presented by Common Ground Arts

Created by: Josh Languedoc and Neil Kuefler

Directed by: Neil Kuefler and Mark Vetsch

Starring: Emily Berard, Rebecca Bissonnette, Maria Buffalo, Ivy DeGagné, Doug Mertz, Christina Nguyen, Cody Porter, Elena Porter, Gabriel Richardson, Colby Stockdale, Dylan Thomas-Bouchier

Where: Old Fort, Fort Edmonton Park

Running: through Aug. 4

Tickets: tickets.fringetheatre.ca, on a pay-what-you-will scale

 

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