‘It was a fine night for murder’. The FAMILY CROW: A Murder Mystery. A Fringe review

Posted on August 22, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Adam Proulx and Horatio P. Corvus in The FAMILY CROW: A Murder Mystery, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

The FAMILY CROW: A Murder Mystery (Stage 14)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Think about it: there’s a certain improbable ambition about any solo murder mystery onstage: the narration, the detective, the suspects, the planting of clues, the withholding of clues, the diverting of clues…. The demands are beyond human.

Well, exactly. The weird, cuckoo brilliance of this funny show by Toronto’s Adam Proulx, is that one large crow, the impressively feathered Horatio P. Corvus (“sorter outer of murders” by trade) is in charge of the investigation. And he isn’t just some fly-by-night narrator. Horatio plays all the characters, an all-crow cast list of suspects. Which makes The FAMILY CROW a bona fide theatrical caws célèbre.

Ah, and by the way, Horatio, a crow with a formidable beak, a resonant delivery, and a manic glitter in his eye, is attached to virtuoso puppeteer/playwright Proulx, an artist of many voices and an apparently limitless supply of puns. So, a tale of “horror, mystery, betrayal, murder” and puns: it is an unusual delicacy. And in Byron Laviolette’s production it happens on a shadowy stage lit, ingeniously, by five gooseneck desk lamps, with assistance in feather-ruffling from an audience member armed with a fan.    

The deceased, laid out in the family room chez Crow, is eldest son and heir Russell Crow, a military hero and “a bird of exceptional talons.” And since his murder, “under their very beaks,” seems to be an inside job, the family members, starting with right-wing patriarch Edgar Allan Crow, are prime suspects.

All the trappings are there: interviews with each suspect, denials, the analysis of alibis, and in the grand “Agatha Crowstie” tradition a pièce de résistance group confrontation in the drawing room.

The plot is a clever high-flier, and the writing is a stylish delight. And what fun it is to see such verbal and physical cross-species dexterity onstage.

If you miss this one, it’s your funeral.

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In this comic gem, meet the ultimate outsiders: Rat Academy, a Fringe review

Posted on August 22, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

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

Rat Academy (Stage 23, Holy Trinity Anglican Church)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Face it, cats have had their day (and night and decades) onstage, ingratiating themselves with the public. What of the rat, the ultimate outsider, marginalized, up against a hostile world for their very survival, especially in Alberta? Everyday’s an existential crisis when you’re a rat.

In Rat Academy, a captivating, wonderfully imagined clown show from the duo of Dayna Lea Hoffmann and Katie Toner, we meet two, in an alley. Ever seen a rat shrug? Fingers (Hoffman), the scrappier, more street savvy of the pair, glares suspiciously at us: “why are they in my house?.” Let’s just say it’s not his (pronouns up for grabs) first block party.

Rat Academy, Batrabbit Productions, Edmonton Fringe 2023

Shrimp (Yoner) is white, a bit fluffy, rabbity (to mix our species metaphors), dazed, a veritable Candide of a rodent — an escapee from the lab out in the world and (dangerously) ready to make friends among us.

Fingers will have none of it. He undertakes his pal’s worldly education, with props at hand in the garbage can and pilfered cheese “for special occasions.” Forget self-esteem therapy; this isn’t rodent Beckett, for god’s sake. This is practical paws-on pedagogy from the street (er, the alley)I , with lessons like How 2 Steal (a comic classic, from the Three Stooges tradition), How 2 Sniff, How 2 Fight.

The worldly vs. innocent dynamic is very funny, expertly established and sustained (along with rat voices). And so is the way the characters interact with the audience. Shrimp is a distractible student, who keeps flunking every night school course at the academy, and we laugh sympathetically. Fingers, the fierce one, on a short fuse getting ever shorter, is increasingly exasperated with his protegé — and with us, for our reactions. The more he hears the Awww of cuteness, the more he rolls his eyes. “O my god. Come on!”

Both Hoffmann and Toner are responsive; these rats are light on their feet, and quick on the uptake. There’s rat shit, true, but nobody sings Memory. The interview section, in which our rodents venture into the audience with a magic 8-ball, is a riot.

I know you’ll have questions, about friction in the teacher-student relationship, etc. In a world that doesn’t give a rat’s ass about outsiders, can the rat demi-monde transcend personality conflict? C’mon, see the show. It’s a masterly little comic gem.

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Is there such a thing as feminist porn? Lady Porn, a Fringe review

Posted on August 22, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Kristin Johnston in Lady Porn, Whizgiggling Productions, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied

Lady Porn (Stage 2, Backstage Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Is there such a thing as feminist porn? That’s a tricky question put to us by Lady Porn.

And here’s a couple of soft lobs that Trevor Schmidt’s new play for Whizgiggling Productions slams into the back court. Does porn count as feminist if there’s an all-female cast and crew? Is the born-again Christian in the cast off the hook if she’s just doing it for the cash and her husband is in favour of it? Do you score any feminist cred if you call a movie a film?

The characters are a trio of former porn stars. Jill (Kristin Johnston) is producing and directing what she insists will be “female-centric,” an “art film” with, OK, “some hard-core elements” to nail the funding.

Cheryl Jameson in Lady Porn, Whizgiggling Productions, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied

Bonnie (Cheryl Jameson), whose stage name was Bunny Velvet, left the biz when she married a guy she met in a porn cast. They found the Lord, gave up “depravity and sin,” and now Kevin’s a pastor with a ministry. Bonnie is back in the biz, only temporarily of course, because their double-garage needs a new roof and plumbing is expensive. Kevin says that God says it’s OK.   

This slow-moving play opens, curiously, with long, explanatory, self-justifying monologues from Jill and Bonnie, the former revealing a certain evasiveness on all details (the backers want to remain anonymous) and the latter exuding pieties. They seem to be well-established positions.

Michelle Todd in Lady Porn, Whizgiggling Productions. Photo supplied

It’s no accident the most appealing character is veteran porn star Denyse (Michelle Todd), with 4,000 titles in her resumé. She’s the most honest for one thing, and also the most succinct. No big monologues for Denyse. She just says breezily “I’m up for anything!” from time to time.

The performances in Schmidt’s production are vivid from all three actors. And the script is not without its witty lines as you might expect. But once the characters have declared their positions, at length in the case of Jill and Bonnie, there’s not much room for dramatic development. They can only repeat them, with variations.

Lady Porn has a built-in hypocrisy detector, whether the pieties are feminist or Christian. Only Denyse, the business woman who declares freely that porn is a business, comes off clean.

 

 

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The calming effect of drawing, conversation, and silence: the unique experiment of Muse, a Fringe review

Posted on August 21, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Cameryn Moore, “muse,” Little Black Book Productions. Photo by Hassan Ghoncheh.

muse: an experiment in storytelling and life drawing (Stage 5, Acacia Hall)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

There’s a uniquely welcoming show at the Fringe that’s actually about audience participation, an experiment in experimenting … with yourself.

As a non-artist whose hands-on art experience is stick-persons on stickies, and the back row of Art History 201: the Renaissance, I was curious. As someone who’s never even held a piece of charcoal, much less been in a life-drawing class with a live nude model, I wondered what it would be like to draw someone.

So I borrowed a sketch book, and got offered a piece of charcoal (there are art supplies, while they last) at the door. The only introduction offered by the model, Cameryn Moore (a playwright/ actor in the theatre side of her life), was to list the number of poses she was going to do, some one-minute, some three-, some 10-.

If you ask her questions, which Moore invites you to do, you’ll find Muse a memoir, and a fascinating one, about a life spent since 2017 in Berlin as a theatre artist, a nude life-drawing model, and a Size X-large person in a judgmental culture. If there weren’t questions, presumably, Muse wouldn’t be a memoir and Moore would be fine with silence, after a couple of first-hand stories she offers at the outset, to make things not be weird for an audience used to coming to the Fringe for a “show.” But who wouldn’t want to ask a nude model some questions if they got the chance?

Ah, the questions. A funny, candid, and thoughtful sort, Moore  attended to the questions, and considered them before answering. Actually, my fellow draw-ers asked questions I wanted to hear the answers to. She considered them before answering. Nude models aren’t allowed to shrug, of course. But Moore was relaxed about conversing in this way, and so we relaxed too.

And gradually, both in questions and in the companionable silences, we get the idea that being a sculptural nude body has been validating, transcending, for someone the culture is very inclined to marginalize. I wouldn’t dream of using the f-word (fat, I mean). Moore does.

The 60 minutes went by in a flash. And at the end, in “the community gallery” of our drawings on the floor (if we felt like revealing them) for everyone to wander around and see, there was a kind of group ease and joyful spirit.

Incidentally, for what it’s worth, it turned out I don’t have a clue how to draw. There’s no transforming dénouement like that to my expedition. But it was a fun, easeful, and  experience. And I wouldn’t have missed it.

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Teasing ‘High Art’ into submission: The Merkin Sisters: Deux, a Fringe review

Posted on August 21, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Ingrid Hansen and Stéphanie Morin-Robert in The Merkin Sisters: Deux, Edmonton Fringe. Photo supplied

The Merkin Sisters: Deux (Stage 13, Service Credit Union Theatre, La Cité francophone)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

But is it Art?

The Merkin Sisters, that sibling duo of hirsute avant-gardistes, are back at the Fringe after six years to tease and tickle that Ultimate Question once more in their follow-up show.    

And those Merkins (Ingrid Hansen and Stéphanie Morin-Robert) know how to make an entrance. Unsmiling, they jostle through the audience in the galleries butt first, in bathrobes and towel mohawks — direct from the gender-neutral shower room so to speak — to get to the stage. That’s where high-style robotic choreography gives way to a version of Swan Lake. And that’s where there’s an explosion of pubic hair the likes of which haven’t been seen here since they were last in town.

It’s performance art that’s a funny, deadpan satire of performance art. If you’re asking, but what does it mean? you are so on the wrong track. The Merkin Sisters makes playful, inventive physical comedy from free association, unhinged from causality or motivation or logic, glowering all the while. And they fool around, hilariously, with a fundamental principle of the avant-garde: if you don’t find it baffling it’s not High Art (maybe only medium-low to low,). “Some people ask us why we do what we do (moment of silence). And what it is we do do,” a Merkin asks us solemnly.

Exactly. There’s a veritable catalogue of theatrical devices to jar you out of your staid middlebrow lives and present you the chance to ask another High Art question (while laughing): But is it ironic?

The Merkins are scornful; they cast withering looks our way. They’re not here to ingratiate themselves with the audience in one of those interactive shows where there’s no right answer. This is High Art. Dancing Lycra lipstick tubes that are their own mouths, a cutting-edge development in contemporary puppetry. And there are appearances at perplexing moments by old-fashioned puppets too, There’s a ne plus ultra masturbation scene for two. There’s an amplitude of body hair, and a birth scene that’s obligatory in the metaphor lexicon of audience interaction performance art.

And every once in a while, a Merkin reaches into a jar of little pieces of paper on which we’ve all answered a question about the first time we lost (fill in the blank) — and annotates tersely: “Pandemic Art,” “Un-relatable art” and the like.

Actually one of the Merkins, grouchy, has a question too, doubtlessly asked many times in the world of High Art: “why do I always have to play the vagina?” Answer: “because you have the bigger mouth.”

The fun of The Merkin Sisters is to  see physical comedians, and a goofy comic invention, unleashed on Performance Art. You get to see what performance art would look like if it was riotous. If you’ve seen one too many broody Fringe confessionals, this could be your kind of show. Then give yourself an encore: hie yourself to Hansen’s weird and kooky solo show Epidermis Circus.

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Wanna be in a movie by a legendary director? The Method Prix, a Fringe review

Posted on August 21, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Deanna Fleysher and Brooke Sciacca in The Method Prix. Photo by Sulai Lopez

The Method Prix (Stage 17, Grindstone Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“People ask me all the time what it’s like to be a genius artist,” says the legendary Hollywood auteur-director Vincent Prix (Deanna Fleysher), flinging himself into a selection of dramatic sultry poses as he shoots live footage of himself.

He’s greeted us at the door, with an intensity of gaze that positively reeks of artistic greatness. Now we’re in his “studio” to watch genius at work, as the great man makes “a classic of the American cinema” from scratch. And in this latest from L.A.’s Deanna Fleysher (Butt Kapinsky), a “drag clown” whose appetite for risk seems to have no limits — it’s kind of breath-taking and kind of scary — we will find ourselves part of the shoot.

One among us finds a lighting instrument in his hands; another is the make-up person. The caterer has the honour of holding the Prix Perrier till needed. As headshots of contenders appear on the screen, Prix scrambles through the audience on the hunt for a hot young leading man. He rejects one after another — too much Nordic angst, too happy, “too mentally healthy.” And then  “Hollywood wild child” Dylan Thruster (Brooke Sciacca) swaggers up to the stage, with exactly tousled coiffure, and the slightly open-mouthed bring-it pout that models have.

Prix is on fire; he’s found his man boy, his new Brando, his new … well….. But the leading man keeps finding desirable co-stars, his -ex, his L.A. trainer, his love interest (Prix is dismayed), among us, and brings them to the stage. We’re the extras, called upon to invent the scenery as the leads chew it. The fourth wall is long gone, trampled underfoot. It’s chaos — is it art or is it a shambles? — and it’s funny, as Prix works his impulse “Method,” to shoot scenes.

Fleysher’s show, a satire of the movie mythology of the director/creator/genius, is actually built on audience participation, risky in itself, and escalation, even riskier. Scenes Prix creates with us, recorded live on the screen, and live scenes with Dylan Thruster are interspersed with Prix’s fantasy sequences (with songs) about coupling with his leading man. The interplay of live, live feed recording on-, off-, and backstage gets more and more frenzied.

All those Hollywood clichés about making love to the camera? All those theatre clichés about playing with, and not just for, the audience? Fleysher and Sciacca never waver. They’re fearless improvisers both, and they keep upping the ante. The architecture of  The Method Prix is balanced precariously on the epic egos of their characters. And from that infrastructure you can’t quite believe how far they’re unafraid to go.

Funny, original, nervy, and nerve-wracking.

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An Old Testament skit: Bathsheba and the Books, a Fringe review

Posted on August 20, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Bathsheba and the Books, Handmade Ivy Stage and Screen, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied

Bathsheba and the Books (Stage 1, Westbury Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Bathsheba and the Books is a rare example of serious Old Testament scholarship, a sadly neglected field at the Fringe. JUST KIDDING.

It’s more like an SNL sketch or a Catskills skit night contribution than a play. The amusing premise is that the Old Testament’s sexpot Bathsheba, King Solomon’s mom, has left her va-va-voom days behind, she says. The new image she’s cultivating is Literary Intellectual (“leave me alone, I have reading to do”). And her plague (of locusts) project, so speak, has been putting together a compilation volume she’s set to call the Bible. Why that title? “Lord of the Rings was taken.” She’s even enlisted an increasingly harried editor (Chris Fassbender), who needs the work.

Who knew Bathsheba (Aimée Beaudoin) was the one? Anyhow, the Old Testament remains a largely unfurrowed field when it comes to comedy — OK, except for those Adam and Eve jokes, and Moses at the Red Sea-side routines, and those inadvertent occasions when the heaping on of ‘begats’ tends to make the crowd hysterical. But let’s not quibble: David Ellis Heyman’s claim to that territory is largely unchallenged in Canadian theatre.

Anyhow, the whole process of selecting the books for the world’s first Bible is on speed dial because Bathsheba’s son King Solomon, one of those spoiled rich kids with anger management issues (Jake Tkaczyk) has run out of money for his vanity project, The Temple of Solomon. So he’s grabbed hold of the project, and Bathsheba has 15 minutes to choose the books for her best-seller. Deadlines deadlines.

The self-appointed project bean-counter Hiram (played by Jeff Halaby like a wired Borscht Belt comic) is on the case, putting in his two shekels-worth about which books to pick, which to toss, which to save for the sequel.

Davina Stewart’s cast is a quartet of skilled comic actors. And they, along with director Stewart’s choices, make for an amiable, mildly amusing 45 minutes.

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More than a Scooby snack: SCOOBIE DOOSICAL, a new Dammitammy musical. A Fringe review

Posted on August 20, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Andrew Cormier, Cameron Chapman, Bella King, Natalie Czar in SCOOBIE DOOSICAL. Photo by BB Collective

SCOOBIE DOOSICAL (Stage 4, Walterdale Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Well gang, looks like we have another mystery on our hands (a couple, actually).

One (a Fringe specialty) is the mystery of inspiration. With their new musical, Dammitammy Productions’ resident playwright/composer muse Rebecca Merkley finds a kooky outlier of an idea. It bounces gaily off a ‘70s cartoon so earnestly dopey it’s achieved vintage stoner status as a classic. (Side note: never let it be said there is no place at the Fringe for the classics).

A gang of teenage sleuths and a talking Great Dane on a perpetual quest for Scooby snacks: that’s what Merkley is working with, in this high-speed four-actor musical. SCOOBIE DOOSICAL isn’t a spoof exactly (spoofing a spoof is like capturing air in a sieve); it’s more like an homage. And Scoob, played by the delightful Bella King, is the hero, both put-upon and infinitely forgiving, and devoted to the inept nice guy Shag (Cameron Chapman).

There’s a mystery, involving a villain; the evil and homophobic Professor Riggleruffs (Andrew Cormier) is hot for revenge, or maybe world domination (lucky for the world, he’s a Luddite) and he’s terrible to his glum cat Kyle (Natalie Czar), always a bad sign. There’s non-stop activity: chase scenes (through a toy mansion), car rides, adventures in the woods (“rustle rustle” says Czar wielding a branch for verisimilitude). Periodically there are ad breaks, with jingles, starring the increasingly exasperated L’il Stinks (King).

SCOOBIE DOOSICAL, Dammitammy Productions, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo by BB Collective

There’s big fun in watching Cormier and Czar quick-change wigs and  characters (their near-misses are funny, too), faster and faster — and annotate (“wow, creepy laughter”). The cat doubles as crisis-prone Daphne; Cormier is also the bespectacled smartie Velma.

SCOOBIE DOOSICAL is a veritable barrage of dog and cat jokes, and lightly tossed contemporary allusions of all sorts — to musicals, to theatre, to politics, capitalism, the state of the world, to gun control, to text-speak, homophobia, and political correctness. AND it’s a musical about love and loss and the terrors of growing up, which borrows from Sondheim’s Into The Woods (“no one is alone”) and Company. Sondheim and Scooby Doo: it’s a first.

Merkley’s songs, which range from pop-y Pedal to the Metal to musical theatre ballads (“I’m seeing you brand new for the very first time”), have clever, rhymed lyrics. From what I could hear, that is. At the opening performance the clangy sound mix favoured the keyboards (Yvonne Boon) so extremely they were often inaudible, alas.

There’s a real original at work in this fledgling musical. It’s bright, it’s fun, it’s full (possibly over-crammed) with theatrical ideas, and it doesn’t shy away from poignance. So far it feels like it’s in sketch form coming at you, a discovery with a future. And that’s something the Fringe is for. 

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The hunger for human connection: Fiji, a Fringe review

Posted on August 19, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Vance Avery and Chris W. Cook in Fiji, Shatter Glass Theatre, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied

Fiji (Stage 6, Gateway Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Isn’t it what everyone hungers for in the end? Human connection at the deepest, most visceral, level? A soul mate?

That universal quest for an all-consuming, all-consumable passion is at the heart of Fiji, a dark and disturbing two-hander that’s billed as “a true crime-inspired love story.” Rom-com meets thriller in this Edinburgh Fringe two-hander of 2021, getting its North American premiere here in a production directed, with great finesse, by Lora Brovold.

It starts as one of those comically awkward meet-ups that are the sequel to online chatting. Sam nervously arrives early at Nick’s apartment for dinner with a bottle of wine. Will they live up to their online billing and be compatible in person? Will they have sex? They’re careful with each other’s boundaries, and they start to get  more comfortable with each other. They ask those get-to-know-you dating questions: What floats your boat? If you could invite anyone, dead or alive, to dinner, who would it be? If you won a million dollars, what’s the first thing you’d do?   

Chris Cook in Fiji, Shatter Glass Theatre, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied.

Gradually, unobtrusively what has started in wincing comedy — ever so natural in the skillful performances of Chris Cook and Vance Avery — gathers unsettling details. “I’ve wanted this for a very long time,” says Sam. “There’s no going back,” says Nick, who’s making dinner, carbonara, to launch their weekend date.

It’s the way Fiji twists darker and darker, without losing its macabre sense of humour that will rattle you. Talk about deadpan; Fiji brings home the bacon. It’s a shocking little play. And I just don’t know how to tell you what it’s about without giving something crucial away. Suffice it to say it’s based on the real-life 2001 case of one Armin Meiwes, but don’t look it up till after the show if you want the full experience.

The test of the production is how it builds tension (not to mention appetite), and how it makes the unthinkable not just possible but kind of inevitable. Everything is consensual, almost reasonable. Love is sought; love is involved. And Brovold in her directing debut and these two fine actors score on all points. I held my breath so long I started to see purple stars.       

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What just happened in there? Crrrrrrazy. Forest of Truth, a Fringe review

Posted on August 19, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

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

Forest of Truth (Stage 28, Nancy Power Theatre at the Roxy)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Hello, depressives out there. For those of you done with the solemn, the quietly understated, the mild-mannered, minimalist or monochromatic, in life and in art, the Fringe has an antidote for you.

To call Forest of Trees high-spirited or zany is to fall way short of describing the maniacal energy of this lunatic clown fairy tale creation by Theatre Group GUMBO from Osaka Japan.

It’s a veritable hallucinogenic of a show. And the morning after, I’m wondering if I just dreamed it. Dizzying colours, giant sparkly apples, metallic butterflies on spikes, a dancing sperm with a light-up end that danced into the crowd in search of an egg…. Let’s just say the props department chez GUMBO doesn’t think small.

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

Everything about the reactions of the agile, rubber-faced four-performer cast is outsized: mugging on speed. Smiles are madly ear-to-ear; Frowns are full-face crumples. Laughter is a full-body workout: mouth wide open like a scream, shoulders up and down like pistons. When the characters are delighted, the stage nearly shakes. Flirtation? well, I could tell you about the giant sequined nipples for the audience to twirl, but then there are some things you have to see for yourself, in person.  Polite? Don’t make me laugh (even harder). And there isn’t one inside-voice in the show.

Did I forget to tell you the plot? Oops. In the Forest of Truth, which is pretty much the conceptual opposite of the Hundred Acre Woods, all will be revealed about the true nature of love. The queen of the forest, who (I think) is a relative of Snow White’s evil stepmother, is hot after some “true love essence” to keep her #1 in beauty. And her minion, the fairy of the forest, is her procurer. The scenes are announced on placards; the fairy shrieks with laughter every time at this vaudevillian device.

There’s a manly warrior with anger management issues who brandishes a sabre and falls in love with a demure maiden awaiting her Prince Charming. A veritable earthquake of passion instantly happens, with (temporarily) romantic music. Later in the show, since they’re in the Forest of Truth, we’ll discover their secret thoughts about each other. The fairy of the forest will ride across the stage on a stick horse for reasons that are not revealed in the forest of truth. Why on earth am I telling you the story?

It’s crazy (or as they’d say in the show crrrrrrrrazy!). It’s fringe-y. Sit back and let it come at you.

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