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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Theatre magic: with Tiger Lady, the Dead Rabbits return to the Fringe. A Fringe review

Posted on August 19, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Tiger Lady, Dead Rabbits Theatre, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied.

Tiger Lady (Stage 1, Westbury Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The story is fascinating, snatched from the archives of circus history by the English company Dead Rabbits Theatre (The Dragon, My Love Lies Frozen in the Ice).

In Tiger Lady, we meet Mabel Stark, the circus world’s first-ever female tiger tamer. In the early years of the 20th century, the heyday of the Ringling Brothers, a Kentucky orphan escaped the harsh bonds of her unpromising life, and ran away with the circus. And a star was born.

It’s an exotic story, to be sure. And how a nimble cast of six create something rich and strange (a love story, a comedy with tragic dimensions, a tragedy with comic dimensions) from it is the particular achievement of Tiger Lady. That they create an atmospheric world using three ladders, a sheet, a door, parachute silk, and music is magic. Theatre magic, the kind that happens before your very eyes.    

Tiger Lady, Dead Rabbits Theatre, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied

Somehow — you won’t quite believe it yourself — you’ll find yourself captivated by the ingenious and playful theatricality that turns a story of crazy courage and ambition born of desperation into … a love story. It happens on the spot; the Dead Rabbits are not about exposition. “It’s funny how the world turns on the smallest of things.”

Mabel (Natisha Williams-Samuels) leaves a world where “the circus is the devil’s work” and discovers a world where love can exist, albeit with a high-risk factor. She falls in love with a tiger, her special tiger Rajah, her baby (puppeteer Eddie Breckinridge). Yes, you will feel fear and awe as Rajah gets bigger and bigger. Yes, your heart will be warmed by the attraction between Mabel and an empathetic human (Abayomi Oniyide). The audience participation in a show about showbiz is fun and unforced.

Tiger Lady, Dead Rabbits Theatre, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied.

The ensemble populate the circus, including the animal division, with comic gusto: the mouthy and conniving ringmaster Al (Antonio Victoria ) forever holding bankruptcy at bay, along with his much put-upon animal trainer and enabler Louis (James Parker) and his jaded dancer (Chloe Waddilove) who needs the job. Ferdinand the elephant has a particularly memorable entrance.

And then, from time to time, the ensemble pick up instruments — trombone, banjo, washboard, a drum that’s a box — and flesh out the narrative with jaunty jug-band tunes.

It’s a measure of the theatrical expertise at work here that you hold your breath every time that free-standing door opens, a theatrical variation of The Lady, or the Tiger?. As in circuses everywhere, we’re attracted by the allure of danger, the possibility of a fall, a maul, the outcome that can never fully be predicted. It’s only human.

And so is the way a high-spirited comedy is haunted by the thought that the deepest scars are the ones you can’t see. Mesmerizing.

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Let’s play ‘who’s the deviant?’. The Catalogue of Sexual Anxieties, a Fringe review

Posted on August 19, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

The Catalogue of Sexual Anxieties, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo suppliedall

The Catalogue of Sexual Anxieties (Stage 8, Old Strathcona Performing Arts Centre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

If the Andrews Sisters had sung about masturbation or genital warts, they might have ended up with a musical like The Catalogue of Sexual Anxieties.

“Are you sex deprived?” One of the trio of the bright, disarming young women onstage asks us at the start of of this sprightly boogie-woogie musical by Marion Poli, Aniqa Charania, and Charlotte Szabo. In an audience pretty much equally divided between men and women, one lone guy in a nearly full house bravely puts up his hand. And we are full of admiration for him.

It’s one thing to sidle up to sex obliquely, via characters or metaphors or allegories. But there’s probably no subject in the world more fraught, alarming, anxiety-producing when it’s addressed directly, personally, in public, with strangers. And no subject that kills the confessional instinct, or can make you feel lonelier or more uncertain when you suspect you’re an outlier.

Is it just me? It’s a universal question. And the spirit of this inclusive show, devised by three actors when they met at musical theatre school in Glasgow, is reassuring. When it comes to sex, if everyone is weird, no one’s weird. What can rules mean under the circumstances?

In the Victorian period (when, as they point out, the vibrator was invented), women talking about sex, much less keen to have it, were labelled “hysterical.” So, as latter day “hysterical ladies” this trio have licence to share stories (and songs) about everything from their own sexual awakening, their first time, their fears about under-performing or over-performing, to condoms and niche questions like “can you get tetanus from braces?”   

They’re funny and candid, and their show has lightness to it, not least because it relies on the musical theatre stagecraft of director Kate Ryan of Plain Jane Theatre. The performers are in constant motion, grouping and regrouping as they consult a big impressively antique-looking volume, a bible of blasphemy as one says, from chapter to chapter.

There are cultural differences in sexual attitudes to be explored: Szabo is from England, Poli is from France, Charania from France, with ethnic variations too. And their choice of musical style for original songs by Patrice Peyrieras — they’re strong singers — has a kooky charm to it: Andrews Sisters’ tight harmonies, with choreography to match.

What drives this playful show is sparkle, chemistry, and the musical chops of the likeable performers, who sing songs, and share stories, and feel free to disagree the way women friends do over coffee. It starts to unravel a bit three-quarters of the way through its 75-minute duration; perhaps the show casts its net a little too wide, once the actors start addressing motherhood, the biological clock, careers…. Until then, it’s a bold original.

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An eccentric musical about an eccentric real-life character from Canadian history: Amor de Cosmos. A Fringe review

Posted on August 18, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Cody Porter in Amor de Cosmos: A Delusional Musical, Joe Clark Productions, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied

Amor de Cosmos: A Delusional Musical (Stage 8, Old Strathcona Performing Arts Centre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Start with this, and hold the thought: there is a new musical in the theatre repertoire about a Canadian provincial premier.   

That would be William Alexander Smith, an earnest loon of a 19th century guy who (to radically foreshorten his resumé), re-christened himself Amor de Cosmos, became the second premier of B.C., became an MP, became appallingly right-wing, and went insane. You know, the usual.

And, a century and a half after his salad days, he has been lured out of the mists of historical obscurity by attracting the attention of writer Richard Kemick (evidently a diligent and inspired researcher) and singer-songwriter Lindsey Walker, who is the quintessence of musical versatility.

Amor de Cosmos: A Delusional Musical is crowded with incident. And politicos. And characters (assorted friends and relatives and employers). And elections, and editorials from the newspaper he started, and lawsuits…. In 60 minutes. What heightens a wildly scrambling caper of a true-life story to near frenzy is that the cast size is one: the game, crazily busy Cody Porter armed with two hats that enable him to do dialogues, with assistance from composer Walker at the keyboard.

Cody Porter in Amor de Cosmos: a delusional musical, Joe Clark Productions, Edmonton Fringe. Photo supplied.

I have to admit that I had  trouble following what is undoubtedly a fascinating story, with cautionary reverb in these parlous right-sliding times. Partly this was because of the condensation of its narrative intricacies from the 90-minute original. Partly it’s because the text, written entirely in iambic pentameter, tended, like Walker’s lyrics, to fade into the iffy acoustics of Stage 8. Alas, a mic, a mic, his kingdom for a mic.

A shame since Porter is a fine comic actor, and his essentially light singing voice could use a boost. I did hear enough to know that Kemick’s book is witty, smart, with epigrammatic turns of phrase and lots of puns (“Rielpolitik”).  And his insights about a well-meaning reformer who turned into a crackpot and went into politics make for an arc that is undoubtedly worth the hearing. “A good job is a bad thing” or “I’ve seen the writing on the wallpaper.” How many musicals have you seen lately that open with a thought about “the art of any filibuster …”?

This is an eccentric musical about an eccentric character from Canadian history, and it definitely has a future. Like Amor de Cosmos himself it’s a real original, which is what the Fringe is for. It’s just that it cries out for most hospitable technical circumstances for its cleverness. After all, Walker’s hook song, “you must be unforgettable” has found a forgotten figure who’s potentially just that — on the plus and on the negative side.

“Every day’s a struggle with the world. Not to own it. Just to know it,” says our hero in his pre-anti-hero days. Which is also true of musicals.

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Dreams into nightmares: The Coldharts are back with Edgar Perry, the eerie finale of their Poe trilogy. A Fringe review

Posted on August 18, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Edgar Perry, The Coldharts, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied

Edgar Perry (Stage 4, Walterdale Theatre)

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“I presume that everyone present has heard of me,” says the tense little swaggerer with the carnivorous smile who stands before us.

Yes, actually, we have. With Edgar Perry, the Brooklyn duo The Coldharts, Katie Hartman and Nick Ryan) bring the Fringe the final instalment of their gothic trilogy devoted to the eerie interface between the strange haunted life of horrormeister Edgar Allan Poe and his strange haunted stories.

The premise on which all three “minimalist musicals”get their shivers is double-ness, dark and light, pursuit by a relentless doppelganger. Poe’s unnerving story William Wilson is the inspiration. In Edgar Allan, precocious young Edgar discovers, on his first day at boarding school, that his plans for group domination are thwarted by a rival — a boy with the same name and equally formidable gifts. In Eddie Poe, the teenage Edgar is off to the University of Virginia, lured by his double — or is it the other way around? — into ruinous dissolution.

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And now, in Edgar Perry, the minimalist weirdness continues. Booted out by his rich guardian, facing destitution and devastated by the loss of his only friend (a Burmese orangutan named Berenice, shades of The Murders in the Rue Morgue), Edgar undertakes a self-reinvention. He’s still haunted by his mysterious hoarse-voiced rival, who cannot save him from his worst impulses. He enlists in the American army, home of a lot of people’s worst impulses, a renamed super-being anticipating a meteoric rise to the top. And he sings a song of context that starts with the Trojan War.    

Edgar retains his manic not to say mad glitter in Katie Hartman’s performance. He snatches up a ukulele from time to time to sing very odd, un-metred, songs of mental disturbance. Edgar’s dreams apparently do not include leading roles in pop musicals.

Despite the routines of the military world and the tug-of-war with his double, played gravely by Nick Ryan (who also takes on a variety of roles in the story), Edgar continues to slide into sinister friction with his world. A macabre incarnation as an engineer-cum- landscape gardener is a sort of hallucination turned into a nightmare. Murderous struggles in the dark ensue. And the bare-stage theatricality of the production on a dark empty stage, with shadow-play behind a curtain (that’s where we meet Berenice) and hand-held lights, adds to the creepiness.

Asking a show about galloping madness to cohere has its contradictions, I realize. But with its multiple characters, expository annotations, and scattered activity onstage, I find Edgar Perry unravels in a way that doesn’t quite command attention and galvanize unease the way the first two shows do. But having said that, it’s a pleasure to welcome the Coldharts and their distinctive vision and theatrical ingenuity back to the Fringe. They are in a class of their own.

 

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Take that, Henry. Girl power-pop is the best revenge: the new Canadian production of Six the Musical, at the Citadel, a review

Posted on August 18, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Maggie Lacasse, Elysia Cruz, Jaz Robinson, Julia Pulo, Krystal Hernández, Lauren Mariasoosa in Six, the Canadian production. Photo by Joan Marcus.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“History’s about to get overthrown!” sing six Tudor queens who come charging out of the 16th century “live in consort,”in their hot opening  number in Six The Musical. Greensleeves and lutes don’t stand a chance.

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“Tonight we’re gonna do our ourselves justice/ ‘cause we’re taking you to court.” In the slick and sassy 80-minute musical fashioned by Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss (a couple of clever young Cambridge students who took it to the Edinburgh Fringe in 2017), the six ex’s of Henry VIII, English history’s most (in)famous serial husband, are reimagined as girl-power pop stars. And now in a cross-century remix, backed by a live all-female (all-Canadian) band, The Ladies-in-Waiting, they’re onstage to air their grievances. First prize to the one got dealt the worst hand.

And they have to lot to work with. “Divorced. Beheaded. Died. Divorced. Beheaded. Survived (as the Brit History 101 mnemonic goes). But, hey, Edmonton, “just for you tonight we’re Divorced. Beheaded. Live!”

We’ve met the wronged wives, “now, ex-wives!\,” before. In 2019 the Citadel was the only Canadian stop for Six en route from the West End to  Broadway big-time. The pandemic put a hold on that, and its Tony Award-studded sold-out Broadway run, still in progress, didn’t open till 2021. This time the Citadel is where a new Canadian touring production gets launched before it goes to the Royal Alex in Toronto in September.

The creative team, led by co-directors Moss and Jamie Armitage, remains in place of course. Six is great fun to look at, and listen to. The visuals that play on Emma Bailey’s set with its light-up Tudor arches and rock show proscenium are a knockout. The production looks and sounds like the splashy high-end arena rock concert that’s also its premise. Gabriella Spade’s sparkly costumes have witty Tudor top notes (fishnets meet ruffs). Tim Deiling’s razzle-dazzle rock concert lighting, a barrage of flashing lights, cross-beams, a blinding proscenium, is matched by Carrie-Anne Ingrouille’s rock star choreography.

Maggie Lacasse, Elysia Cruz, Jaz Robinson, Julia Pulo, Krystal Hernánd
ez, Lauren Mariasoosay, the Canadian cast of Six. Photo by Joan Marcus.

What’s new is the cast, all but one Canadian. They’re all dexterous pop singers, and in ensemble numbers and as each other’s backup singers, they’ve got the moves too, some more than others (which the show itself makes fun of, in its meta way). And each queen gets a showcase song that nods to signature styles of pop divas like Avril Lavigne, Adele, Ariana Grande…. Marlow and Moss are top-drawer purveyors of witty pastiche; they know their pop music, and they write the real thing.

Jaz Robinson is a tall, fierce Catherine of Aragon, the Spanish princess who had religious grounds for defiance of Henry the career philanderer. She nails the Beyoncé-esque No Way, “no no no no no no no way.”

The scene stealer is the pert French-educated Anne Boleyn, in a very funny performance by Julia Pulo. Her song Don’t Lose Ur Head has a hip-hop flavour, with lyrics in text-speak. “Tried to elope but the pope said nope…. everybody chill it’s totes god’s will.”

Sincere Jane Seymour (Maggie Lacasse), the queen who died after giving birth, gets the power ballad Heart of Stone à la Adele. “What hurts more than a broken heart?” she asks, trying to make a case for herself in the victim contest. “A severed head?” offers Anne Boleyn.

All You Wanna Do, in one way the catchiest bubble gum of the songs and in another the most reflective under the glitter, belongs to the other decapitated queen. In it, Katherine Howard (Elysia Cruz) shrugs that her fate is a natural outcome of a lifetime of getting pawed by guys.

Six has a witty way with anachronisms. Online dating disappointments have a poster girl in Anne of Cleves (Krystal Hernández), who got rejected by The Man when she didn’t live up to her Hans Holbein portrait. She makes a good case for pre-nups. Palace living, with loads of cash, is a better outcome for victims of the patriarchy than, say, beheading. Just sayin.

It’s Catherine Parr (Lauren Mariasoosay), the sole survivor of Henry’s marital rampage, who plants the seeds of the snazzy finale in I Don’t Need Your Love (“I’ll never belong to you”). The queens put aside their differences, powered by the thought that “a pair doesn’t beat a royal flush.” And they come together as history’s snazziest girl-pop group.

Six works itself up to a point about empowerment, kind of in reverse (via a contest to determine who took the most abuse), but doesn’t mope, to say the least. The lack of female agency, to turn a feminist phrase, has never been more fun. Or had zingier rhymes or cheekier anachronisms. OK, yeah, there have been a couple of divorces and beheadings and abandonments in their group history. But showbiz is the best revenge. I mean, is Henry up there singing and dancing in something that makes the crowd go crazy?

REVIEW

Six The Musical

Theatre: Citadel Theatre and Mirvish Productions in association with Chicago Shakespeare Theater

Created by: Toby Marlow and Lucy Moss

Directed by: Lucy Moss and Jamie Armitage

Starring: Jaz Robinson, Julia Pulo, Maggie Lacasse, Krystal Hernández, Elysia Cruz, Lauren Mariasoosay

Running: through Sept. 14

Tickets: citadeltheatre.com

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Finding the light and losing it: the unmissable Sea Wall, a Fringe review

Posted on August 17, 2023 by Liz Nicholls

Jamie Cavanagh in Sea Wall, Bright Young Things, Edmonton Fringe 2023. Photo supplied.

Sea Wall (Stage 34, Roots on Whyte Community Building

Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

It’s entirely possible you won’t see anything at the Fringe to touch the combination of delicacy and shattering power in Sea Wall, an exquisite 40-minute solo portrait of a man by the British playwright Simon Stephens. And in this Bright Young Things production directed by Belinda Cornish it gets a performance to match from Jamie Cavanagh.

Why?, the ultimate, terrible, elusive existential question, hangs over Sea Wall and suffuses it in a way that takes grief, loss, and love into a vast uncharted dimensions of human existence. In half-articulated fragments that seem to be coming direct from memory in Cavanagh’s performance, Alex is reflecting on a story as he tells it (now there’s a subtle distinction), in tiny shards, self-interruptions, annotations, asides. It’s about a trip with his wife and little daughter to the south of France, where his father-in-law has a house.

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What emerges, in Stephens’ beautifully calibrated writing and Alex’s telling — the pauses really count, in this conversation with himself — is a man struggling to capture now and in retrospect the exhilarating mystery of pure love, the sense of fully inhabiting it within and without. And then … its loss.

The production happens without theatrical lighting. As a photographer Alex is fascinated by light — how it can capture the human dimension, how it can vanish. And the production happens without theatrical lighting, on purpose. The bed of the sea, as he learns first-hand, isn’t a gradual slope. The sea wall is precipitous. It falls off into dark fathomless depths. The implications for human happiness, poised as it is on a fragile moment in time, are the quintessence of that why? question.

The only prop at Cavanagh’s disposal is a kettle, and a cup (which he never touches after setting them up). Ah, and Stephens’ marvellous writing. And his performance as a man grappling to understand the unthinkable thinks between the lines. Language keeps leaving off. I can’t tell you more than this: you mustn’t miss Sea Wall. It stops me in my tracks as I’m writing this.

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