Edmonton has play dates: here’s a dozen intriguing prospects in the upcoming theatre season

Posted on September 6, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Mump and Smoot open Theatre Network’s 50th anniversary season, in Exit. Photo supplied.

Monstress, Northern Light Theatre. Photo by Brianne Jang

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

It’s time to play. After a year of continuing struggle, with rising production costs and dwindling funding, theatre companies and artists are finding their way back to stages large and small. Our mighty summer Fringe, as always, is a hint that the live experience is what we’re after (this year’s edition sold 127,000 or so tickets to 216 shows). And it always leaves us wanting more.

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The Mayfield launches its 50th anniversary season this week with Nashville: Music City, the next instalment (through Nov. 3) of Musicians Gone Wild, a series devoted to seminal eras in pop culture history that began with last season’s Rock The Canyon. The Citadel is in rehearsal for Daryl Cloran’s production of the Tennessee Williams classic A Streetcar Named Desire. Mump and Smoot, those existentialist horror clowns, have arrived at the Roxy to prepare for their new show The Exit.

A season announcements from Workshop West Playwrights Theatre just happened,  with news of a Stephen Massicotte premiere and a bold experiment in ticketing. And in the wings are indie productions as yet unannounced. But to whet your theatrical appetite, here’s a little selection (in no particular order) of intriguing shows happening this season, from what we know so far, to look forward to.   

Goblin:Macbeth, Spontaneous Theatre. Image supplied.

Goblin: Macbeth. Something wicked this way comes. Finally. After hot-ticket runs at Bard on the Beach, Stratford, and Calgary’s Vertigo Theatre, at last we get to see this inspirationally weird Spontaneous Theatre creation by Rebecca Northan (Blind Date, Undercover) and Bruce Horak — theatre artists who are the correct answer to “who would even think of doing this?” Three goblins, who’ve stumbled on a Collected Works of Shakespeare, decide to “do theatre,” and pick their favourite: the goriest, and the shortest. It re-launches the Citadel’s Highwire Series, on hiatus for a season, Jan. 11 to Feb. 2.

On The Banks of the Nut. In Stewart Lemoine’s 2001 screwball comedy (a “bucolic escapade” as billed), the “federal talent agent for Wisconsin,” on a rural quest to find “a citizen of rare talent” in 1951, is accompanied by a plucky temp, who seems to be a natural agent of chaos. As in so many Lemoines, music is by no means incidental. Here, the  post-horn solo in Mahler’s Third Symphony unleashes an unexpected life force reaction in the proprietor of Nut River Lodge. Lemoine himself directs the Teatro Live! revival, the first since 2010, that runs on the Varscona stage May 30 to June 13. And you can expect to see a new generation of Teatro talent, joining the company from this year’s auditions.

Mump and Smoot in Exit. The rumours are true! Brush up your Ummonian, Edmonton: the stellar pair of nightmare ‘horror clowns’ from the planet Ummo, who haven’t been sighted onstage in a decade, are back among us this season. Michael Kennard and John Turner are premiering their new show at their home away from Ummo, Theatre Network, as part of that company’s 50th anniversary season. In their slides across the country on a trail of gore and gizzards, existential rumination and, you know, death and torture, Edmonton has always figured prominently— ever since their sensational earliest appearance at the 1989 Fringe, Mump and Smoot in Something. The Exit, directed as usual by Karen Hines of Pochsy fame, herself a specialist in the darkest reaches of hilarity, runs at the Roxy Oct. 10 to 27, in a season that also welcomes back Ronnie Burkett for his Christmas show Little Dickens.

Monstress. It’s been a prolific year for playwright Trevor Schmidt, with premieres of Robot Girls, his hilarious and insightful coming-of-age comedy at Shadow and the thriller Candy & The Beast at Northern Light. And the artistic director of NLT has a new one coming up, to open the company’s 49th season, ‘Making A Monster’. Monstress (Nov. 8 to 23) has an eerie Frankenstein-ian thrill about it: a disgraced doctor in Victorian England who’s enlisted to re-create the dead-neck daughter of a wealthy man. Gradually, as Schmidt has described, the identities of the doctor and her creation begin to intertwine. Schmidt’s production stars Sydney Williams (Fresh Hell) and Julia van Dam (A Phoenix Too Frequent).

The Two Battles of Francis Pegahmagabow. Six seasons ago Shadow Theatre scored a hit with Neil Grahn’s The Comedy Club, the remarkable true story of members of the Princess Patricia Light Infantry Division summoned in the darkest days of World War I to start turning out musical comedies to enhance the morale of Canadian soldiers. The playwright, who also works in improv and sketch comedy, film and television (and leans into a captivating combination of documentary and comedy), returns to Canadian World War I history for this story of the extraordinary life and career of one of Canada’s most highly decorated Indigenous soldiers. His new play, which launches the upcoming Shadow season (March 20 to April 7), tells of the star scout and sniper who returned home after the war to find himself in a world where he didn’t even have the right to vote. And so another kind of trench warfare began for the warrior/ Chief-turned-activist. Ryan Cunningham as Francis Pegahmagabow leads a cast of five in the production jointly directed by John Hudson and Christine Sokaymoh Frederick.

Natasha, Pierre, & the Great Comet of 1812. The innovative allure of Dave Malloy’s through-sung 2016 Broadway hit, lies both in its indie rock/electropop/ folk/ musical theatre score and its highly unconventional storytelling, is lifted from a 70-page segment of Tolstoy’s War and Peace. Which is to say there’s nothing like it in the repertoire. I’ve seen it once in a sort of spiegeltent in New York, and once on Broadway (the Crows Theatre production in Toronto was extended twice this past season). It was a coup for MacEwan University’s theatre arts to get the rights for the student production, directed by Jim Guedo, that runs Feb. 12 to 16.

playwright Colleen Murphy

Jupiter. Any new play by the great (and fearless) Colleen Murphy is a Canadian theatre event. This Order of Canada appointee has a long history with Theatre Network (Pig Girl, The December Man, The Society for the Destitute Presents Titus Bouffonius). And that’s where her latest premieres, as part of their starry 50th anniversary lineup. Jupiter, set in Murphy’s own Quebec and northern Ontario home turf, happens over four days in a family living room — with dog! And it’s billed as exploring themes of “faith, truth and family dynamics.” Bradley Moss directs the production that runs at the Roxy April 1 to 20.

Dance Nation. This highly unusual dance/theatre amalgam by the American writer Claire Barron, a 2019 Pulitzer Prize finalist, is the mainstage production at the 13th annual SkirtsAfire Festival (March 6 to 16). Intriguingly, it’s set in the tumultuous pre-teen girl world of competitive dancers, but it calls for a multi-generational all-ages cast of adult women. Amanda Goldberg, the festival’s new artistic producer, directs, as SkirtsAfire returns to producing (and not simply presenting) after the success of last season’s Mermaid Legs.

A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The 70s Musical. The cross-border success of Daryl Cloran’s Shakespeare-Beatles mash-up on As You Like It has inspired this latest venture (Feb. 22 to March 23). It match-makes Shakespeare’s most popular romantic comedy and its complications in the woods with David Bowie, Elton John, the BeeGees, Marvin Gaye, Olivia Newton-John…. Who are the hopeful thesps, Bottom the weaver and cohorts, the most reliably funny inhabitants of Dream, in this 70s world? An aspirational rock band? Cloran partners on the script re-do with Kayvon Khoshkam, the artistic director of Shakespeare on the Saskatchewan. At very least, a virtuoso turn in song rights acquisition is in the works.

Alphabet Line. AJ Hrooshkin’s play, the winner of this year’s Westbury Family Fringe Theatre Award, is tuned to the prairie vibe — rural/ urban, distant horizons, the need for connection in vast space — and what it means to be gay in the western Canada hinterland. In the late 1940s a queer man living on the family farm sends out daily messages by radio in hopes of a response. And then he gets one — from the big city of Saskatoon. It premieres in the Fringe Theatre season April 25 to May 3.

A Gentleman’s Guide To Love And Murder. In a first for the enterprising and indefatigable little theatre, Grindstone, the new manager of the theatre spaces at the Orange Hub (10045 – 156 St.), is launching a mainstage subscription series of three big musicals there. And this riotous 2013 Tony Award-winning musical comedy is one of them (May 23 to June 1). It chronicles the murderous swath cut by a penniless, disinherited hero en route to an earldom. Only eight relatives stand between the aspirational Monty and his goal. It’s a quick-change virtuoso role, and the nimble character leads a cast of nine. Byron Martin directs, and casting announcements await.

Heist. There’s big and lavish in the Citadel’s upcoming season (think Let It Go). And there’s also this intriguing (and rare) theatrical proposition: a crime caper for the stage. Alberta playwright/ screenwriter (who’s also an ophthalmologist, in a rare double career) Arun Lakra has devised a heist with all the trimmings — double-crosses, diamonds, guns, lasers. It premiered last season at Calgary’s Vertigo. The Citadel production directed by Haysam Kadri, the artistic director of Alberta Theatre Projects, runs March 22-April 13.

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The curtain comes down on Find Your Fringe: more tickets sold, bigger artist payout.

Posted on August 25, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Funny Beyond Words: A Physical Comedy Cabaret at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

After 11 days and nights of sunshine and stars (and also wind, smoke, rain both horizontal and vertical), the 43rd annual edition of our monster summer theatre bash is about to exit the stage tonight. “Our Fringers are hardy,” says artistic director Murray Utas in admiration.

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By Sunday noon (with an afternoon and evening of shows still to come), Find Your Fringe had found itself with some warming box office stats, starting with the 127,000 tickets sold to its 216 shows (update later).

That’s a sizeable increase from the 114,000-plus tickets to the 185-show Fringe landscape of 2023. And, perhaps most impressively, the payout to artists, who take home 100 per cent of the ticket sales (minus the Fringe surcharge), has climbed to $1.3 million. Which is up, relative to the number of shows, from the seam-bursting 258-show 2019 Fringe with its $1.4 million pay-out, spread among a lot more artists, and the $1.2 million that went back to artists at The Answer Is Fringe last summer. In fact, says Fringe Theatre executive director Megan Dart, “it’s the second-highest payout ever at the festival!”

Another box office number that delights Dart and Utas is 397 sold-out performances as of Sunday noon, and 11 totally sold-out runs of Fringe shows. As Dart pointed out Friday, that number includes Fringe shows whose entire runs were sold out before the festival even began. And the visits to the festival’s Old Strathcona site were calculated at 750,000, up from 550,000 last year. Which will have happy consequences for Sea Change beer sales when the final tally is in.

Alas, though, the Sustain Fringe hasn’t arrived at its $300,000 end-of-Fringe goal (it was at $228,000 at noon Sunday). But Dart does report that the 34 monthly donors who signed up when the campaign launched in March have become more than 500. “We were quite vulnerable when we put out a call for help…. It’s a testament to the important of this event here,” this in a country where fully 25 per cent of arts organizations didn’t make it through the pandemic.  Sustainability on a scale remains in crisis mode in a landscape pummelled by rocketing production costs and shrinking funding.

The 2024 edition of Edmonton’s theatre extravaganza, though, was big and defiant. New this year was the move of the Late-Night Cabaret, a midnight tradition that’s been a hot ticket and a gathering place for Fringe artists for more than a decade — from the Backstage Theatre to the Granite Curling Club. Not only is the venue much larger — “a backup (300-seat) venue in case of smoke, rain, snow, hail…” says Dart, but the move eliminates the need to keep the Backstage configured as a cabaret space. “Yup, we returned a theatre venue to a theatre festival!” says Utas. A meteorologist on call has turned out to be a good move too, custom-made predictions minute by minute for planning at a festival with a large-scale outdoor carnival component. “So well written, they could have been read by Judi Dench,” says Utas.

Meegan Sweet in The S.P.O.T.T., Squawk Theatre at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo supplied

If you like me were thwarted by Sold Out notices in your quest to see, say,  The Flying Doctor, Empress of Blandings’ small-cast contemporary update of the Moliere comedy, or a solo show starring a raccoon who dreams of being a  human, Meegan Sweet’s The S.P.O.T.T., you’ll recognize the continuing, rejuvenating surprise that is the Fringe. Indie theatre is forever a struggle, and the Fringe and Fringe audiences are a boost to its artists, both in the development and springboarding of new work.

Lauren Brady’s OWEAaDEBT, HEYwire Theatre at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo by Joel Sims.

There are, to be sure, obvious ways audience participation happens, at a festival where fourth walls are in short supply. Lauren Brady’s OWEaDEBT, for example (held over this week at the Fringe), unleashes a sly and winking sense of humour about including the audience directly in a highly original, reimagined version of Swan Lake, with its urgency about the  transformative power of romantic love. In Stéphanie Morin-Robert’s Soft Spot, an elastic-sided mix of comedy, karaoke, and something a lot queasier and more traumatic, she asks us “does anyone want to come up here and save me, I’m drowning,” And someone does.

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

But the Fringe audience, more directly accessible to Fringe artists in small informal venues, participates in other ways, too, more subtle perhaps but important in developing a script or testing a creative idea. Sometimes it’s via feedback; sometimes it’s just a matter of being there, and reacting. Kate Ryan, the artistic director of Plain Jane Theatre, directed Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina), an experiment in making musical theatre that’s held over this week at the Varscona Theatre. It took up the challenge of turning Collin Doyle’s beautiful and intricate hit play Let The Light of Day Through into a musical (with composer Matt Graham) with a future. Changes happened right till the curtain went up on opening night, and then kept happening at every performance.

“Fringe,” says Ryan, “has definitely been an invaluable part of the process of this new musical! So many parts to balance with script and music. We knew that an audience would be a part of the new step in the development…. Collin, myself, and Matt, who’s playing live are at every performance, listening and feeling it, and checking in with actors after. There has been a couple of script and song additions, and allowing moments to breathe more. We’re excited about the next steps for this piece. And grateful for any and all feedback too. We want it all!.”

Garett Ross, who co-stars with Jenny McKillop, thinks Fringe audiences “have had an impact on how far we could go with the lightness and darkness of the piece. This was something I didn’t realize until we actually had an audience, how willing they would be to buy in to the joy and the grief….”

“Fringe audiences lean in. They want to be moved, affected…. They take time off work to invest in this! I totally love this about them. I love standing at the door to greet them as they enter and leave. I learn about how the show impacts them. And I’ve heard it all — the best learning experience for me as a director.

Stephanie Johnson and Thomas Buan in Who’s Afraid of Winnie The Pooh? Clevername Theatre at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo supplied.

Is the Fringe still the right place for indie theatrical experiments? It’s a question that gets asked yearly. Dart takes “the freedom to experiment at the festival” as one of its great strengths. On their first visit to Edmonton,  Minneapolis-based Clevername Theatre would agree. They brought us an audacious production, Alexander Gerchak’s bold and unusual Who’s Afraid Of Winnie The Pooh? which actually does present the Edward Albee scorcher with the A.A. Milne characters. It premiered at the 2022 Minnesota Fringe, like many of the company’s most experimental pieces.

“It always involves a bit of a leap of faith taking a newer work to a new community,” says Gerchak, “even when the venue is geared toward more experimental work…. We have been incredibly pleased to find that Edmonton has connected to our show in a big way…. Our company is a big believer in the strange and provocative and thought-inducing. And after getting a chance to see a number of other works at the Edmonton Fringe, and the audience’s engagement with them I believe the festival is a welcome home for such work (and for ours).”

Mermaid Entertainment’s Alison Wunderland, a kooky high-speed musical comedy which sold out every performance in its months-long run at the tiny commercial Spotlight Cabaret, the Fringe was an experiment in moving from Off-Off Broadway to the big house, the Garneau Theatre (and it’s held over this week at the Varscona Theatre). “Audiences did show up!” says Aimée Beaudoin, in the cast herself with her Spotlight co-producer Jeff Halaby. “We averaged 225 people per show which was wonderful.”

A show based on playing directly, up close, hand-on-shoulder so to speak, with the Spotlight dinner-show audience had to change in an exponentially larger venue. “We relied on the script,” says Beaudoin, “since there’s no time to talk to the audiences before the show and gather ‘intel’. In a way I like this better, using the actual jokes we wrote, rather than throwing in a joke about ‘Bob’s 50th birthday’ for a cheap laugh. It gives the show more integrity, and the audience is just as delighted with a straight-up show.”

“The Fringe,” she thinks, “opens us up to new audiences and this is wonderful for Spotlight! We’d love more of the theatre crowds to come see what we’re doing in our regular season.”

And in the end, that link between the Fringe and the theatre scene the rest of the year is something that shouldn’t be fragile or hit-and-miss. It’s the research-and-development branch of theatre, where a lot of the excitement of new talent and new ideas happens, and the risks get taken. It’s what keeps us coming back for more.

Have you checked out holdovers of Fringe shows in three venues?

 

 

 

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The Fringe heads into its final weekend on a roll

Posted on August 23, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

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

Find Your Fringe finds itself going into its final weekend on a roll. With good news to share.

As of Friday morning the 216-show 43rd annual edition Edmonton’s 11 day-and-night summer theatre binge has sold 13,000 more tickets to indoor shows than at the same point in last year’s Fringe. And as Fringe Theatre executive director Megan Dart reports, to her particular delight, the payout to festival artists (who take home 100 per cent of ticket sales, minus the $5 max festival surcharge) has already broken the $1 million barrier. Which does more than hint that last year’s $1.2 million artist payout will easily be surpassed by Sunday night.

“Our goal is always to build audiences, and give artists the support they need,” says Dart. And this year’s 216-show dimensions, an incremental rather than an exponential increase from 185 in 2023, feels like “a comfortable fit” for audience engagement, she thinks. “Deep roots instead of wider branches.”

So far, Fringe organizers report “more than 300 sold-out performances.” And, says Dart, multiple shows (among them Rat Academy, High School Musical, Evil Dead the Musical, Colin Mochrie: Live At The Fringe!) sold out their entire Fringe runs before the festival even began. The Fringe’s nightly Late-Night Cabaret, always a magnet for insomniac fringers in its 13-year history at the 120-seat Backstage Theatre, “continues to bustle every night,” as Dart puts it, in its new digs, the Granite Curling Club, a venue twice the size.

The beer tents have been so busy that the Fringe’s usual mid-week mid-festival order, traditionally Wednesday, had to be bumped back to Monday instead.

Like many other arts organizations across the country, it’s been a year of struggle for our Fringe, the oldest and still the biggest on the continent. The skyrocketing costs of producing the massive festival, and shrinking (or frozen) funding from every level of government, have seen to that. The festival’s “Sustain Fringe” campaign was launched in March, with the aim of raising $300,000, in $5-a-month pledges. It started with 34 monthly donors, and as of Friday morning, there are 420-plus. And the current campaign total stands at $210,000.

“If every Fringe fan donated $5 a month, the Fringe would instantly be sustainable,” says Dart. Opportunity knocks: fringetheatre.ca/give/sustain-fringe/.

And meanwhile there are shows to see, lots of shows. Have a peek at 12thnight’s reviews; you can find them gathered under the heading “Fringe 2024,” at 12thnight.ca.

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Wait, there’s more Fringe to find: holdover shows in three Fringe venues

Posted on August 23, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Lauren Brady in OWEaDEBT, HEYwire Theatre at Edmonton Fringew 2024. Photo by Joel Sims

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Yes, Find Your Fringe, the 43rd annual edition of Edmonton’s big summer theatre bash, has its grand finale Sunday night. But if you haven’t quite succeeding in translating Find into Found!, a dozen of the most intriguing and popular shows at this year’s festivities are held over, in three Fringe venues — the Westbury, Rapid Fire Theatre’s Exchange Theatre, and the Varscona — next week.

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At the Fringe Theatre Arts Barns, in the Westbury Theatre

100% Wizard (Keith Brown): Friday (Aug. 30) 9 p.m., Saturday (Aug.31) 7 p.m.

Let’s Not Turn On Each Other (Walters and Watt): Friday (Aug. 30) 7 p.m., Saturday (Aug. 31) 9 p.m.

OWEaDEBT (HEYwire Theatre): Wednesday (Aug.28) 9 p.m., Thursday (Aug. 29) 7 p.m.

Shirley Gnome: Titular Character (Heartichoke Arts): Wednesday (Aug. 28) 7 p.m., Thursday (Aug. 29) 9 p.m.

Dayna Lea Hoffmann and Katie Yoner in Rat Academy, Batrabbit Productions. Pghoto supplied.

At Rapid Fire Theatre’s Exchange Theatre

Big Business (New Noise Productions): Friday (Aug. 30) 7 p.m.

Marv n’ Berry Presents: Trash Pony (Rapid Fire Theatre): Friday (Aug. 30) 9 p.m.

PLAYS BY BOTS (Rapid Fire Theatre): Saturday (Aug. 31) 7 p.m.

Rat Academy (Rapid Fire Theatre): Friday (Aug. 30) 5 p.m., Saturday (Aug. 31) 9 p.m., Sunday (Sept. 1) 7 p.m.

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

At the Varscona Theatre

Accidental Beach: A Previously Improvised Musical (Grindstone Theatre): Tuesday (Aug. 27) 9 p.m.

Alison Wunderland (Mermaid Entertainment): Thursday (Aug. 29) 7:30 p.m., Friday (Aug. 30) 7:30 p.m.

Bright Lights (Blarney Productions): Tuesday (Aug. 27) 7 p.m., Wednesday (Aug. 28) 9 p.m.

Rob and Chris (Bobby + Tina) – A New Musical (Plain Jane Theatre): Wednesday (Aug. 28) 7 p.m.

Holdover tickets: fringetheatre.ca/holdovers

  

  

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Die-Nasty, the meta-Fringe fringified edition. A report/ review sort of thing from 12thnight

Posted on August 22, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

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.

Posted in Fringe 2024, Reviews | Comments Off on Die-Nasty, the meta-Fringe fringified edition. A report/ review sort of thing from 12thnight

How hard can it be? The real-world theatre of the absurd in 638 Ways To Kill Castro. A Fringe review

Posted on August 22, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Patrick Lynn and Sebastian Ley in 638 Ways To Kill Casto, Vault Theatre at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo by Spenser Kells.

638 Ways To Kill Castro (Stage 3, Nancy Power Theatre at the Roxy)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

As a source of absurdity in the world, there might actually be a rich, limitless, renewable repository in … reality. And this smart and very funny satire by Sebastian Ley knows exactly how to mine it for comic gold. Which is to say, with a straight face, characters with no sense of humour, and grave commitment.

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Absurdity pertaining to government and politics is particularly high-yield (and rare to find at the Fringe). It’s the early 70s, and despite a decade and a half of single-minded and, it must be said creative, attention to the subject (code name Operation Mongoose), the CIA has still not succeeded in assassinating Castro. How hard can it be? The title of the play is, hilariously, no joke. [Note to skeptical readers: these are historically true, look it up.]

It’s not for want of trying, as we learn in 638 Ways To Kill Castro. The “ways” are all tailored to what the spy elite of the mighty American military-industrial complex have discovered to be favourite Castro activities: exploding cigars, diving suits laced with botulism, poisoned conch shells…. They’ve even tried to hire a little Cuban kid to pretend to be Castro’s bastard son and assassinate him. Foiled again: they’ve come up against “terrible Cuban child labour laws, “terrible because they exist,” as Goldwater (David Ley) points out with a calm, dry deadpan.

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

As the play opens, the Operation Mongoose office is getting desperate for results. The CIA bureaucracy is on them to produce. Ominously, an ambitious newcomer Vandenberg (Patrick Lynn) has arrived from the finance office to oversee their accounting, and an official review is imminent. The ass-covering has already started. Is their a pinko in their midst?

Vandenberg gets introduced to the team led by Trench (playwright Ley), in charge of brainstorming new ideas and desperate to impress his dad, a CIA bigwig. Of the office workies, David Ley is the unfaze-able World War II vet, a career 9 to 5-er always on the phone to the New York or the Cuban office. Assassination? A job. With a pension. “A few gunshots never hurt anyone,” he says when yet another device dreamed up by gadget guy Pope (Samuel Bronson), misfires in the office. You’ll laugh out loud to overhear a phone call to Haven with further instructions about an exploding pen.

This succession of failures, too outlandish in a Dr. Strangelove way not to be true, continues as human tensions roil and boil in the workplace. Surprises ensue, some of them pertaining Pope’s growing awareness that he might have psychic powers.

The working-out of this intricate dark comedy has one or two brief moments when the satire briefly sidesteps its own logic. But it’s an accomplished piece of work, fun for the audience with its engaging mix of scenes for two, three, all four. Playwright Ley has a sharp eye for period detail, and ear for dialogue, and there are performances to match in Kathleen Weiss’s Vault Theatre production. It’s full of pauses that are zingers in themselves.

This is a show to seek out. Avoid assassinating for a ticket, or at least cover your tracks.

 

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Amazing but true: mind-exploding synchronicity from the brain inside Gordon’s Big Bald Head

Posted on August 22, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Amazing but true. A quick sidenote to Monster Theatre’s Erika The Red (my review is here). By a mind-exploding Fringe synchronicity, on Wednesday I saw improv virtuosos Gordon’s Big Bald Head, actually improvise on the Varscona Theatre stage (Stage 11) an entire production of Erika The Red, their own version of the Monster Theatre play, as part of The Art of the Steal, their annual undertaking to improvise, on the spot and in 60 minutes, any show in the Fringe program, chosen randomly.

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And amazingly, the trio of deluxe comic improvisers (Jacob Banigan, Mark Meer, Ron Pederson), actually embraced, impromptu on the spot, many of the same comic complications and themes of the original — the bloodlust for revenge, the problematic ethical complexities of (you know) pillaging and all that, gory death scenes on a bare stage, and even (hilariously) the language gap between the Celts and the Vikings. With added layers from Marvel. How do they do it? GBBH is one of those great Edmonton mysteries, unequalled anywhere: an astonishing achievement in concentration and smarts, and spontaneous literate wit.

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Complicated fun with Vikings: Erika The Red from Monster Theatre. A Fringe review

Posted on August 22, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

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.

 

 

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Til’ (a whole bunch of stuff, check the box) do us part: I, Diana. A Fringe review

Posted on August 21, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

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

I, Diana (Stage 2, The Next Act Backstage Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Narcissism requires constant maintenance and sustenance. In this light-hearted new relationship comedy, with a twist, from Linda Wood Edwards, we meet the kind of someone theatre blurbs love to call “a strong woman.”

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Diana (Sue Huff) is a prairie razzle-dazzler who styles her general demeanour and game after the Roman goddess of the hunt. The centre of the universe, as she declares cheerfully of herself.  Diana is, naturally, an indefatigable collector and discard-er of followers (all men, as you will surmise). Getting married on high holidays — like Christmas, Valentine’s Day, 9-11, or the closing night of a community theatre production of South Pacific —  “elevates” the whole affair.

A serial divorcée, Diana is her own wedding planner, as you might expect. Marriages can go south, “but wedding photos can be controlled.” So Diana’s marital career unfolds in a set of amusing wedding photos, the obverse side of her mirror in the amusing design by Huff and Kevin Tokarsky.

The light-as-air fun of Wood Edwards’ production is that all the men, eye candy for Diana, are all played by one: the game Tokarsky, in a series of wigs that will make you laugh. He’s chosen in each case by Diana for a certain resemblance to a celebrity or a celebrated type— Richard Gere, Tom Selleck Don Johnson, the quintessential rancher dude, John Denver, Harrison Ford…. And glitches, for you to have the fun of discovering, begin to occur, every time. A continuing theme is that the men are considerably more interested in her children than Diana is, which she finds both perplexing and irritating.

Wood Edwards’ writing is peppered with droll asides that are the personal property of Diana, who (as Huff knows) is funny because she says witty things with a beaming smile and unsmiling, absolute, matter-of-fact certainty.  “I love you Diana,” says one of the smitten ones. “You hold some appeal for me, too,” she allows warily.

Sometimes it’s refreshing to have validation for your worst instincts, and this is the comedy to tease you with that prospect. Is there any reason for driving a station wagon when you could be at the wheel of a Ferrari?

 

 

 

 

     

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Camping with “two special girls”: Let’s Not Turn On Each Other, a Fringe REVIEW

Posted on August 21, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

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

Let’s Not Turn On Each Other (Stage 25, Spotlight Cabaret)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Now, here’s a theatrical welcome to warm the heart. An appealing pair of clowns, whose resting state is high excitement, are downright ecstatic when they catch sight of us.

Bethandreth and Cownow can scarcely believe their good fortune in having company. After all, they’ve been out in the wilderness by themselves for a long time — months maybe, or years or decades, “let’s just call today Friday” — waiting for a signal from “the prophet.” We gather they’re true-believer cultists on assignment, whose outpost location, they’re convinced, is a measure of their importance to “the guild.”

In this unusual new “musical play, a clown show with occasional music by and starring the team of Jacquelin Walters and Michael Watt, they have an original patter song about that. “Two special girls….”

Every day they wait, an appealingly wide-eyed and boisterous Vladimir and Estragon (Beckett goes camping, with guitar and ukulele?). The prophet has left them with a daily ritual, specific instructions for guild-approved virgin behaviour. These include a written manual: “wash your face,” a “daily stretch,”“look out for wolves,” “listen to a tape” from a scratchy collection that includes one devoted to seven hours of the prophet breathing.

The songs, inventively folk-ish in style, have a kind of ritual significance to the characters that is very unlike the usual infrastructure of musical theatre. They’re positioned at moments of crisis when Bethandreth and Cownow are in need of reassurance. “What do we do when we’re in trouble? We sing The Trouble Song,” they tell each other other. “Turbulence is the stream in which we travel….”

When an inadvertent revelation comes their way, they set forth from their wilderness home on a scrambly journey, with an unreadable map, through hill and dale and over the bar of the Spotlight Cabaret. And they sing themselves a touching little song, “did you know?”

We meet characters who are hopeful and distractible in the clown-ly way, bouncing back from their wounds. The performances from Walters and Watt are big and bold, with southern accents that come and go. They virtually burst out of an inconclusive, open-ended story; first they’re followers, then they have to make their own choices, in tandem with nature. “We’re going to make love to Mother Nature.”

It’s an oddball, wistful little original, this one. I found it beyond my grasp, but in an appealing way.

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