Jay-suss, saving souls, and raising money: Brother Love’s Good Time Gospel Hour, a Fringe revew

Posted on August 21, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Brother Love’s Good Time Gospel Hour. Photo supplied.

Brother Love’s Good Time Gospel Hour (Stage 1, ATB Westbury Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“Edmonton, are you ready to be saved!?” asks Brother Love, travelling salvation salesman  — and purveyor of such spiritual aides as his ‘dirty preacher wives’ video series, and “Christian poppers” and other recreational enhancers. And the answer apparently is Yes.

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Brother Love (Noam Osband) and his cheery assistant Sister Alice (Edna Mira Raia) are here, along with his glum band and the Gospelettes back-up tambourine rattlers, to wrest our souls from the damnation of “secular pornography,” which is A SIN. His mission is to divert our spiritual path from the sinful competition to “Christian porn,” which is not only righteous, but for sale. Salvation, we will learn, has much to do with body orifices, created as they are by the Lord. “My god is a sexy god.”

“Someone will get touched tonight,” he and Sister Alice assure us. And there’s a catchy join-in song that pursues the thought in numerous reprises of  “glory glory glory somebody touched me,” the Stanley Brothers classic repurposed for this special occasion.

Fifteen minutes into this raucous show Brother Love and co are displeased that there have been no donations yet. The urgency of the mission on behalf of Christian porn has been upped, as Brother Love reveals, by the bad behavior of his latest ex-wife, Mrs. Love IV, who “cleared me out.” Poor woman, she just didn’t understand a preacher has to be on call 24/7 for in-person visits to troubled female members of the flock. But it’s not the money, Sister Alice hastens to add. Lack of donation shows such a lack of respect for “the Lord’s conduit.”

As you will glean, no one would accuse this satire of Christian evangelism of being in any way subtle. It has a fearless sense of humour; it identifies its satirical target early (instantly), and hammers it relentlessly for an hour. This is, of course, exactly how televangelist infomercials work, by endless repetition, in thundering demonstrations of greed and crassness that wear you down. And Brother Love does set the bar impressively high. Theatre, however, does stall under such high-pitched repetitions (even if you’re supplied with tambourines and paper money to join in).

The Lord’s conduit is a spirited, fearless performer, and his defence of Christian porn and ‘cocaine for Christ’ is unwavering. All good unclean fun, and the audience did dig in. In the end it kind of erodes your cringe threshold, and you may find it takes you a while to get it back. If audience participation tends to make you avoid eye contact, this might be a show to actively avoid.

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And back in the Hundred Acre Wood…. Who’s Afraid Of Winnie The Pooh? A Fringe review

Posted on August 20, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

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

Who’s Afraid of Winnie the Pooh? (Stage 18, FOH PRO Stage, Grindstone Venues)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The title alone of this play from Clevername Theatre of Minneapolis stops you in your tracks, with its sheer head-on bravado and disaster potential.

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What can this be? A parody of Edward Albee’s lacerating ‘60s relationship drama that rocked the post-war theatre world? A joke perhaps a couple of notches too goofy? No, and no. Who’s Afraid of Winnie the Pooh? might be the most surprising show at the Fringe, and one of the most memorably clever.

Alexander Gerchak’s play isn’t a spoof. Amazing as this sounds, it is actually a version of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? — with the insights, the one-upmanship, the relationship exfoliation, the humiliation gamesmanship that make the Albee a shattering experience.

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

Winnie (Thomas Buan) and Piglet (Stephanie Johnson) return home from a Hundred Acre Wood party, in warring mode. She’s invited a younger new couple, the upwardly mobile Christopher (Nick Hill) and brittle Hunny (Victoria Jones) over for more (and more) drinks. And the sniping and undercutting begin, along with the warning “not to talk about the Boy.”

Winnie, “a bear of very little brain” as his partner is fond of pointing out, is a writer of stories that have long since ceased to impress her. In his fuzzy brown cardigan, he has the slightly worn air of someone who’s taken his share of slings and arrows. And Piglet, flirtatious and hostile in equal measure, is dishing them out, along with condensed milk cocktails (the hard stuff). “Don’t mind the old fuzzball,” she cheerily advises the guests, who are finding the bickering awkward.

And so the ritual humiliation begins. “A real man is made of more than stuffing.” Let’s play Pork the Pig, Pooh suggests. Or Pin The Tail On The Donkey.

If you know the Albee play, you’ll be fascinated to see how this version is fashioned in parallel to the A.A. Milne stories, and feels dangerous in an Albee way. If you don’t, you’ll appreciate the artful way it takes us to insights about the famous Pooh stories, and “the Boy,” Christopher Robin, who will get sent off to elementary school in another dimension than the Hundred Acre Wood. If the Albee is about the high cost of life-sustaining illusions, the version in the Hundred Acre Wood is, in its own original way, a play about the end of childhood.

Did I expect to laugh, and be moved? Nope. But both happened. And I’m still thinking about it.

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Opening a portal into the dark world: Microwave Coven from Guys in Disguise, a Fringe review

Posted on August 20, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Darrin Hagen, Jake Tkaczyk, Jason Hardwick, Trevor Schmidt in Microwave Coven, Guys in Disguise at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography

Microwave Coven (Stage 11, Varscona Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

At Maxine’s “contemporary split-level,” the suburban matrons of Placid Place are counting down to the stroke of 12, noon that is (much more convenient for scheduling than midnight).

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It’s 1977 and Maxine (Jake Tkaczyk), Fiona (Darrin Hagen), and Carmen (Trevor Schmidt), suburban cultists in dramatic matching robes, are preparing to open a portal into the demonic world.  They’re waiting the arrival of their new neighbour (Jason Hardwick), a perky innocent who’s “the closest thing we’ve ever had to a virgin.” And the snacks, including devilled eggs and devil’s food cake, are ready.

In this the latest from Guys in Disguise, and the writing team of Hagen and Schmidt, they worship at the altar of modernity, the microwave oven, glowing strangely in the dark. “O microwave we bow to you …” they chant, in tribute to this reasonably affordable instrument of world-wide domination.” The ding, the defrost button, the hypnotic rotating plate, the magical way a frozen hunk of something gets to be dinner (OK, maybe not chicken; that gets rubbery).

Guys in Disguise have long had a particular fascination with femininity, marriage, and the depression, dissatisfaction, and dreams of wives at home (Prepare For The Worst, Don’t Frown at the Gown, Crack in the Mirror), not to mentioned processed cheese. Suburbia, the traditional stomping ground of the married, is the playground for a sense of humour in which insights and double-entendres mingle over snacks (not hors d’oeuvres, that’s a different milieu). Fiona still remembers the moment when the neighbours came to watch her melt Velveeta for the first time in her new microwave. “I’ve never seen the entire subdivision come together like that.”

The mysterious way that small appliance worship opens the portal to the fires of hell is a pretty giddy concept, not to be explained by the likes of me. Suffice it to say this is the Guys in Disguise suburban version of Rosemary’s Baby. The performances in Schmidt’s production are, like the wigs (designer: Schmidt), amusing to see. The cast knows a lot about the comic potential of gravitas and costuming: Carmen’s rumbling baritone, the grandiloquent gestures of Maxine, the homey bustle of Fiona.

Take a break from your “serious” Fringe pursuits, and lose yourself in “the fog of distraction.”

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He had it comin’: The Black Widow Gun Club, a Fringe review

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Kristin Johnston in The Black Widow Gun Club, Whizgiggling Productions. Photo supplied.

The Black Widow Gun Club (Stage 4, MacEwan Fine Arts Walterdale Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

This stylish little confection devised by Trevor Schmidt for Whizgiggling Productions comes with all the film noir trimmings:  — sexy sinister music (Mason Snelgrove), atmospheric shafts of light, snarly dialogue that includes the term “low-life,” smoking “for emphasis or affection,” femmes fatales in black if not mourning), a murder.

And here’s a wrinkle: one dead husband plus not one but three widows. An invisible detective is conducting an investigation, and Hugh’s serial marital history is emerging.

Cheryl Jameson in The Black Widow Gun Club, Whizgiggling Productions. Photo supplied

Schmidt’s production reassembles the three-actor cast of comic actors — Michelle Todd, Kristin Johnston, Cheryl Jameson— who have made previous Whizgiggling Fringe appearances hits (Destination Wedding, Destination Vegas, Lady Porn). The performances in Schmidt’s production are sharp and stylish. The formidable first Mrs. Fairfax, a filthy rich red-lipsticked socialite whose copious supply of moolah was a evidently a big draw for the late Hugh, gets an incisive portrait from Johnston. She’s a veritable ice floe of grievances and resentment, with a ‘we are not amused’ glare that could congeal oil at 100 paces.

Michelle Todd in The Black Widow Gun Club, Whizgiggling Productions. Photo supplied.

The second Mrs. Fairfax (Todd) was a cocktail bar waitress on the make (“I was the only one he truly loved”) who refers to Hugh as “daddy” with the sugar implied. She was supplanted by the third Mrs. Fairfax (Jameson), a boho artiste specializing in cocaine-fuelled death-centric nudes, who admits breezily she was never in love with the guy. But hey, “I’ve done worse with worse.” Hugh gave each of his brides a pearl-handed lady-sized revolver as a wedding present. In retrospect, Hugh….

They each step from the darkness into a spotlight to tell their story. There isn’t much more I should tell you since it’s a thriller,  short, staccato, and cunningly put together by the playwright/director. But it’s entertaining, performed with flair, and fun to piece together.

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The comedy of damage control: Ducks, a Fringe review

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Ducks (Stage 20, Blind Enthusiasm Stage at MZD – Grindstone Venues)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

A black-hearted, knowing little comedy asks you to imagine this: a provincial government communications department that’s all about not communicating, concealing, dipsy-doodling around the Freedom of Information Act. Far-fetched, I know.

Ducks, the latest from David Heyman, references a case that sticks in the mind: the indelible ducks drowning in bitumen slime floating in a tailings pond. Duck shmuck. “A PR nightmare for the government” declares the smug, upwardly mobile communications hotshot cum fixer (Sam Free), who’d used the occasion to trounce his exasperated second-in-command (Davina Stewart).

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The nightmare has returned. It’s re-entered via embarrassing invitations, with photo, sent out by the dim and chipper receptionist (Linda Grass) to an office going-away party she’s helpfully arranged for Mitch. “I like doing invites!” She’s even invited the press. Mitch is leaving for a new job in Ottawa, “where the action is….” And he is incredulous that the photo wasn’t triple-deleted long ago.

The office, including the entirely competent press secretary (Jayce McKenzie), is in turmoil, as Patricia Darbasie’s Handmade Ivy production and a pro cast admirably convey. They have exactly 20 minutes to retrieve and destroy all the invitations before Mitch’s career is done like dinner.

This unleashes a veritable tornado of backstabbing, secret agendas and rumour-mongering, tightly wound by the playwright. The habit of denial runs deep in government communication circles, amazingly. Free, a U of A theatre grad, is a real find, funny, sharp, in a veritable buzz-saw of a performance. Stewart, a veritable repository of withering looks as the seasoned communication vet, looks like she’s eaten a bad cashew, and just can’t rid of the taste. Grass, who has a lighthouse beam smile, uses it to great comic effect as the unwitting instigator of chaos. And McKenzie as the unsmiling, unflappable, and ambitious press secretary, has perfected the contained, glinty eyeroll.   

After such a tightly wound, spring-loaded comedy set-up — and one of the great sight gags of the festival (we all laughed out loud) — Ducks could use a kick-ass ending beyond the assurance that there were crises before, and they will continue into infinity. You don’t often want a Fringe show to be longer. This is that occasion.

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Unzipping the red-carpet legends: ‘Golden Grind: A Hollywood Burlesque Show’. A Fringe review

Posted on August 19, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Golden Grind: A Hollywood Burlesque Show, House of Hush Burlesque. Photo by Brennan Royt.

Golden Grind: A Hollywood Burlesque Show (Stage 11, Varscona Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

If all dissertations were as lively as Golden Grind, academia would be the new showbiz hotspot, professors would not be wearing brown corduroy, and the Ivory Tower would have much better lighting.

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Luster Kitten, soon to be Dr. Luster Kitten (Kristi Hansen), is presenting her Film Studies dissertation as a live powerpoint in this, the latest from House of Hush Burlesque. Her subject is the Golden Age of Hollywood. And her research unzips, so to speak, the treatment of women and gender-diverse people under all the gilt-edged sequined glamour. Is it ready for its closeup?

By its very nature, burlesque is a teasing, playful sort of vaudeville, that dances to the rhythm of the cover-up and the reveal. And our intrepid film historian, who presides with arch cordiality from a lectern, has a lighthearted way with metaphor and applies it to uncorseting the careers of some of Hollywood’s legendary glamour queens. All that glitters, she points out noting the double-sided show title, is not gold.

Dr. Kitten argues that Ziegfeld in New York was the pioneer, in the 20s, of a razzle-dazzle spectacle that gave women performers financial stability, choices, and hence a certain groundbreaking autonomy. In a succession of numbers, the House of Hush cast pay tribute to stars who had something more to reveal than the Hollywood imagery that defined them. Doris Day, for example, was “more than the girl-next-door. LeTabby Lexington’s witty homage to DD’s goody-two-shoes rep, twirls the tassels and golden fringes of the all-American girl and finds a naughtier one inside.

The Wizard of Oz in 1939, “the story of a woman who kills anther woman for her shoes” as our host puts it, made a star of the young Judy Garland. And Dr. Kitten reminds us that the indelible film was an apotheosis of whiteness; “shockingly,” it wasn’t until 1975, Diana Ross in The Wiz, changed that. A House of Hush trio fashions an amusing number from that yellow brick road route to stardom.

Violette Coquette’s inventively sexy tribute to Marlene Dietrich, the sultry, radically elusive star who famously kissed another woman on the lips,  happens to a version of La Vie en rose. Sharpay Diem as Hedy Lamar, who challenged the assumption that brains and beauty couldn’t mix, gets an homage from Sharpay Diem, a stage name that can’t fail to make you smile. And the spirit of Mae West, the wiseacre star, lives on in a winking performance by Jezebel Sinclair.

Charlee Queen tributes Dorothy Dandridge, the first African-American movie star to get a best actress Oscar nomination. And the sister act, Canuck in provenance, of the Pickfords Mary and Lottie, as imagined by LeTabby Lexington and Violette Coquette, is the funniest number, a sort of double fan peekaboo that’s all about upstaging. There’s a big Marilyn Monroe finale; my lips are sealed.

Hansen’s script, which she delivers with an entertaining mix of sweet and tart, is full of droll asides and segués. And the show is an eyeful, from the costumes to Audra Dacity’s choreography. Hoot, holler, don’t turn off your cellphone. What fun.

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Was I dreaming? Ha Ha Da Vinci, a Fringe review

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Ha Ha Da Vinci, Phina Pipia. Photo supplied.

Ha Ha Da Vinci (Stage 14, Café Bicyclette Stage)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

In its way this quietly captivating show created by and starring Phina Pipia is a bit like an exotic sorbet. You can’t quite identify the flavour, but it melts in your mouth, and you find yourself wanting more.

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Kooky things happen in Ha Ha Da Vinci, uncaused, but they don’t feel kooky. They feel weirdly natural. A woman with a tuba is transported to renaissance Italy in Leonardo da Vinci’s failed time machine, and gets a message from the past. In fact she talks to the great man himself via a red radio in the bell of her tuba. Going back in time is no problem, apparently; it’s going forward into the future that’s the big challenge (a thought that recurs).

Phina Pipia in Ha Ha Da Vinci, Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo supplied

Bits and pieces of The Mona Lisa magically reassemble themselves into the whole painting. Every step the woman takes on a rug brings forth a different note, and music happens. She’s moved to dance; she plays something from Carmen on the tuba; she picks up a guitar and sings a song. She unfolds a magic square, with amazing results. Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man drawing, hanging at the back of the stage, near an easel and paints, suddenly reveals a red heart. The man has a new, moveable face; it’s our heroine and she sings an opera aria. A sign appears: “look to the moon.” And the moon appears. “Some things are just bound to happen,” she tells us.

You should never go to any Fringe festival expecting to hear a virtuoso tuba solo (or you will, needless to say, be bound for disappointment a lot of the time). It feels special when it happens. Suddenly a lovely renaissance lantern hangs from the woman’s  tuba. You not know what will happen next.

This is a whimsical kind of enchantment, a strange free-floating assortment of music, imagery, dance, illusions. You might be dreaming, which would explain a lot, and it feels fine. I loved it.

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A splintered world, from the inside out: Center of the Universe, a Fringe review

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Jayce McKenzie in Center of the Universe, Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo supplied.

Center of the Universe (Stage 13, Service Credit Union Théâtre at La Cité francophone)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Maxine, at 13, is bright, smart, charming. She just doesn’t seem to be able to (in the common parlance) get her shit together.

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Which is why Maxine is in detention. Again. Writing “I will not rollerblade in the school” on the blackboard, whilst wearing rollerblades. “I don’t know why it’s so hard to do anything, and why I’m so confused all the time.”

There is a reason. And it emerges in the course of a show that sets out to actually demonstrate, from the stage, what it’s like to be an ADHD-er: hyper-alert but perpetually distractible, lacking segués, disorganized, always late, getting bright ideas and abandoning them, letting the free-associative impulse squelch any thought about causes and consequences. “I don’t feel super-connected. So, usually I just feel alone and have to distract myself.”

This deliberate evocation of a scatty world from the inside out, a world that’s very apt to disintegrate, does not, of course, make for dramatic coherence or focus in the usual sense. And Center of the Universe, by and starring actor/playwright Jayce McKenzie, who knows a lot about both ADHD and playing kids, doesn’t hang together in any conventional, explainable way. This is a play with its own kind of theatrical ADHD, and it makes you a bit dizzy.

There are long interludes of Maxine’s favourite music, there are exchanges with a mysterious and reassuring Voice, there are little outbursts of audience participation with a Ouija board. Maxine consults a family photo album tucked into her backpack, which features her sticker collection instead of family holiday shots, a troubling insight into the domestic dynamic.

Can I explain the ending to you, with Maxine gathering her resources for a reveal concerning a mystery box? Nope (and I wouldn’t even if I could). But Center of the Universe does vividly conjure a world of scattered impulses. And McKenzie is such an endearing performer: you want her to succeed.

 

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A human explosion of fabulosity, and rage. Local Diva: the Danielle Smith Diaries. A Fringe review

Posted on August 18, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Zachary Parsons-Lozinski stars in Local Diva: The Danielle Smith Diaries, Low Hanging Fruits at Edmonton Fringe 2024. Photo supplied

Local Diva: the Danielle Smith Diaries (Stage 1, Westbury Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The entrance of the Fringe: the diva seems to have been flung onto the stage from some cosmic wind tunnel, long limbs akimbo, in perpetual motion. Tragidean, the star of Liam Salmon’s Local Diva: the Danielle Smith Diaries, is a veritable human explosion of fabulosity — and rage.

“I feel like I’m constantly on the edge of a vortex,” they tell us. And they dance as if their identity, maybe their life, depended on performing — precarious if you’re wearing stilettos and you live in Alberta.

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Tragidean (Zachary Parsons-Lozinski) has a story to tell, and a visceral wariness about telling it that’s part of the story. We seem to be standing in for the media, where “angles” are created in advance,  then illustrated, then “common ground” is fabricated. And MLA opinion pieces are splayed on broadsheet pages as if they’re news. The diva calls bullshit on that. “How does it feel to be circling the drain?” the diva asks Postmedia, accusingly. They’ve read the stories about themself: “Local queer. Local gay man. Victim. Hero. Example. Metaphor. A villain.”

And they’re just warming up. Playwright Salmon writes in a witty, hot-coals way for a character who arrives onstage having reached some sort of firewall of exasperation. Or is this the melting point of despair? Owen Holloway’s production, for the indie company Low Hanging Fruits, lets it rip. Parsons-Lozinski goes for broke, in a memorable way that isn’t cautious about leaving room for escalation (and is probably not sustainable for longer than the 45-minute running time).

Tragidean’s story, which emerges mid-narrative from the B-grade drag circuit with stops in bowling alleys, is the story of a queer prairie kid. They opt for invisibility in Catholic high school; they come out, they discover a drag persona and the magical validation of performing. And they discover a world that is, by definition, political. Obviously, they point out, more than 50 per cent of Albertan “don’t care about me and my rights.” Jason Kenney “felt like rock bottom,” says Tragidean. And … it got worse. Danielle.

The world is on fire, Jasper incinerated, “photo ops with known fascists,” “Alberta is in the Stone Age,” the health care and education systems getting systematically dismantled, boards loaded with UCP hacks, progress = coal, Gaza is a mass grave. “It breaks my brain,” says Tragidean, whose mind works by wide-sweep accumulation. They’re not about persuading us. They have arrived at the point of finding the world incomprehensible, absurd, unlivable.

How has it all come to this? This final fury has something to do with the mystery of Local Diva, and why Tragidean is onstage, by themself, telling us their story. You don’t very often get to experience a true and impressive rant onstage, written eloquently and performed as if there’s no tomorrow. And maybe there isn’t.

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Argue one for the team: Mass Debating, a Fringe review

Posted on August 17, 2024 by Liz Nicholls

Mass Debating (Stage 11, Varscona Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

What are the odds that the smart girls on the debating team from Our Blessed Bleeding Virgin of Perpetual Sorrow and Suffering will succeed in wresting the Heart of Jesus Trophy from the reigning champions, St. Sebastian’s Parochial School for Entitled Boys?

It’s Catholic junior high school. It’s 1973. Better starting praying for a miracle, girls. The deck, and the monsignor, are stacked against you.

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This odd little musical comedy by playwright Trevor Schmidt and composer Mason Snelgrove does have its sport with old-school Catholic education. The debate questions are a riot: the role of women in the work force (bad idea), divorce (imaginary), contraception (you’ve got to be kidding).

But the real fun of Mass Debating, in Schmidt’s 100% More Girls production, is in the gender-reversed performances by the sextet of inventive comic actors. The boys are played by female actors; the girls, all named Mary and kitted out in prim tartan skirts, by male actors. And you can get quite giddy watching Jason Hardwick’s glum Mary with her bouncing red ringlets. Or the dazed mid-distance look on Jake Tkaczyk’s impassive Mary, a beautiful statuesque blond. Or the mounting exasperation of Schmidt’s bespectacled Mary, whose rallying cry of “not fair!” goes unheeded.

The uncertain swagger of the junior high boy is amusingly captured by Kristin Johnston, whose idea of conversation with the opposite sex is an unstoppable free-associative monologue. Michelle Todd is a smug little brainiac who knows everything, with Cheryl Jameson as a particularly needy and terrified little boy. Their dealings with the opposite sex are very amusing, as set forth under Schmidt’s direction.

The dialogue, as you might expect from Schmidt, is a funny capture. Between songs, there are “messages from the diocese,” and whispered consultations about the other team. “Mary Margaret’s wearing a bra,” says one lad. “What a slut!” says his teammate.

The opener of Snelgrove’s 70s-flavoured pop score is about the stakes in this all-important championship bout. And each character has a musical spotlight moment. But to me, the music, with a couple of exceptions, seems a bit generic, a bit coming-of-age bland. There’s a song about remembering the particulars of childhood, left behind.  “Everything changes but some things stay the same.” I don’t quite get the connection between the finale song, “I finally found my voice; I see that I have a choice,” and the play we’ve just seen, a demo that the boys always get to win.

But you’ll laugh. And there’s surprise tap-dancing, always a delight. More debates should be won that way.

 

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