Turning life experience into theatre: Ellie Heath goes solo at the Fringe in Fake n’ Bake

Posted on August 8, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Ellie Heath, creator and star of Fake n’ Bake, Fringe 2022. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Five years ago, Ellie Heath’s life changed, dramatically. Who changed it? Ellie Heath. 

“It was the moment I took charge of my life,” declares the engaging  actor/ playwright/ sketch comedian and the creator of the Fringe show Fake n’ Bake. Clutter be gone; enter a new buoyancy. “l quit smoking, a great thing. I went into therapy. I quit my (server) job. I quit my dependency on pain killers….”

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And here’s something else. Was it simply cosmic coincidence that this was also the moment that Heath and two of her best long-time pals Alyson Dicey and Caley Suliak, theatre artists all three, started moulding their playful shared sense of humour into stage sketches? Girl Brain, the popular sketch trio that’s gone from success to success in the last five years, was born. Heck, Anxiety and Depression are two of Girl Brain’s favourite recurring characters. Heath plays the character they interrupt at the most inopportune moments, like job interviews or doctor’s offices, or weddings.  

The taking charge and the overcoming of addictions have given Heath a new confidence, she says. Which is why she’s bringing to Fringe 2022 a multi-character solo play about exactly that, the re-wiring of a life. Billed as “a coming-of-age story,” Fake n’ Bake is the “first time I’m performing alone in a solo show I’ve written on my own…. This is my chance!” That it premieres at the Roxy, Theatre Network’s beautiful new theatre on 124th Street, is a particular bonus. 

As every fringer knows, the Fringe has always been a playground for theatre soloists, in shows of their own device. There’s no shortage of examples in the 2022 Fringe program.  Occupying the stage alone is a test of theatrical chutzpah and ingenuity if ever there was one. Transmuting the personal into something sharable and theatrical is a tricky thing; the more personal the story, the more stressful the relationship between art and life. Heath’s source material was her own story, her own struggles with mental health issues, as recorded in “40 pages of essays.” 

It’s a story, she says, of the personal experience of making positive change. “And it makes sense to share what happened to me; maybe it can make a difference to other people too…. I feel a little more confident.”

Fake n’ Bake by and starring Ellie, Fringe 2022. Graphic supplied

Fake n’ Bake isn’t the first play the Grant MacEwan musical theatre grad has created. She and Dicey took their original co-written kids’ play Tree Hugger to the Fringe in 2013. Four years Heath and Sarah Sharkey’s Cadaver, “about a medical student working on a dead body that comes to life, a bit of a thriller,” was at the Fringe. 

With Fake n’ Bake the Heaths en famille stepped up with encouragement. Her dad is a singer-songwriter. “My grandmother, a writer and creative person, loves going to the Fringe, and specifically to one-woman shows: ‘you have to do it. And I am!”  

“The subject matter of Fake n’ Bake, says Heath cheerfully, “could definitely stray to the dark side.” But in the course of honing the play with director/ dramaturge Kristi Hansen through six iterations, a play that’s “rooted in my reality” is “a more light-hearted, more celebratory, more playful show. More authentic to my artistic vision.” With original songs. And a lot more characters. 

“I play a ton of them,” says Heath. “It is, I think, one of my strengths,” as the Girl Brain archive will attest. Among the gallery, Heath laughs, are “my parents and my psychologist; I got consent from all concerned.” 

And so Heath, like her Girl Brain cohorts, is bravely sallying forth to new challenges this summer. Dicey is the director of the KidsFringe. Suliak is starring in The Paladin, an intricate new intergalactic solo comedy written and directed by playwright Kenneth Brown. 

Rising to the Fringe challenge has stepped up her producing and marketing skills, Heath thinks. The Fringe has discouraged handbills this year. Heath had T-shirts made with the show image on the front and a QR code on the back, “so people can scan me.” She’s written songs for the show; one will be on Spotify.  

“It’s a celebrity journey to self-acceptance,” says Heath of Fake n’ Bake. As she puts it, it encourages people “to give themselves some love.” The voices of negativity are everywhere. “This is about learning to talk back to the voices…. Moments, oh gosh, give me embarrassment shivers. But I think there’s dramatic value in that!” 

Fake n’ Bake runs in the Lorne Cardinal Theatre at the Roxy Aug. 12 through 21 (Stage 28). Tickets and show schedule: fringtheatre.ca.

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Getting intrigued: further thoughts on what to see at Destination Fringe

Posted on August 7, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Geoffrey Simon Brown and Émanuel Dubbeldam in Re:Construct, RISER 2022. Photo by Brianne Jang

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Every life coach (and no travel agent) will tell you it’s not the destination but the journey. But it’s also the Destination, since that’s the moniker of this year’s Fringe. 

The exploration is yours, my friends. That’s the whole point (and since we’re immersed in the Destination metaphor, we all know the risks of Trip Advisor). But, to get yourself started, did you have a peek at 12thnight’s selection of intriguing prospects here? And there’s this: in the 164-show lineup at Destination Fringe, there are shows I’ve seen before and enjoyed — during the season, or at previous Fringes. They may well be adjusted, re-worked, re-drafted by now; artists are congenital tinkerers with their own work. Really, it’s what they do, and art never stands still. But here’s a sample of half a dozen shows for your consideration.

Geoffrey Simon Brown and Émanuel Dubbeldam in Re:Construct, RISER Edmonton 2022. Photo by bb collective.

Re:Construct. This fun, insightful, theatrically inspired two-hander created by playwright/designer Even Gilchrist, is a celebration of Self (with cake!). It’s a diary of sorts, funny and poignant, in which a trans man revisits and embraces his youthful self in the company of an idealized cis alter-ego. It also embraces the audience. It premiered in April, as part of RISER Edmonton’s 2022 series. Check out the 12thnight review here. 

The Disney Delusion. A winning combination of stand-up and theatre propels this very funny solo show by and starring Leif Oleson-Cormack. The rueful, knowing, older Leif reviews a disastrous adventure by the naive younger Leif, designed with the blatant ulterior motive of landing the man of his dreams and quickly devolving into chaos. A repository of wince-laughs. It was at last summer’s Together We Fringe. My review is here.

Mi Habana Querida, Cuban Movements Dance Academy. Photo supplied.

Mi Habana Querida. An explosion of colour, costumes, irresistible music, sexy  moves in this cultural survey of Cuba in a dance musical through a Romeo and Juliet lens (the star-cross’d lovers are an American and a Cuban divided by the Revolution). Cuban Movements Dance Academy brought it to the 2021 Fringe. The 12thnight review is here.

Juliet: A Revenge Comedy. A mostly new cast this time for the Monster Theatre production of a clever, witty play in which Juliet pries herself from the Shakespeare tragedy where she has to die at 13 for love of a guy she met oh, you know, a couple of days before at a party. She and a couple of other of the Bard’s doomed heroines confront their maker. It was at the Fringe, with co-playwrights Ryan Gladstone and Pippa Mackie in the cast, in 2019. The 12thnight review is here.  

Candice Roberts in LARRY. Photo by Kristine Cofsky

Larry. Candice Roberts is fearless in this very funny solo show, a satire of old-school macho dude-ism. The title dude has gotten wind of a new thing, self-improvement. And this show is his entry point into the artsy foreign world of … showbiz. It was at the Fringe in 2019. Check out the 12thnight review here. 

Are you loving’ it?. Perfectly bonkers. I didn’t see this kooky quintessentially Fringe-y show from Osaka’s Theatre Group GUMBO in 2019. But 12thnight guest reviewer Alan Kellogg appreciated its barrage of theatrical weirdness. Check out his review here. 

  

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‘A post-pandemic brain scrubber’: what to see at Destination Fringe

Posted on August 6, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Epidermis Circus, SNAFU. Photo by Jam Hamidi

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Your Destination is on the right (also on the left and straight ahead). And this late-pandemic world seems … possible and ready to be lively. Yes, the Fringe is back, starting Thursday, in the town where the continent’s fringe phenom began.

“A post-pandemic brain scrubber!” says SNAFU’s Ingrid Hansen, the co-creator and star of Epidermis Circus. She was talking about surreal art, of which her new and weird puppet show (see below) is an example. But she might have been talking about the Fringe itself with its 164-show universe to play in, at the 41st annual edition of the continent’s first and still biggest fringe.

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So, what looks promising? It’s a brain-expanding question since there’s no wrong way to fringe (except not see shows). Artists have experimented; so should you. 

But just for starters, here’s a selection of show possibilities that caught my eye (for the playwright, the play, the company, the director, the cast, or maybe just their irresistible weirdness). I haven’t seen them yet either; we’ll be exploring together. (Stand by for a  12thnight.ca post soon about productions I’ve caught before, or at other festivals, or during the season). 

Mathew Hulshof, The Margin of the Sky, Teatro La Quindicina. Photo by Ryan Parker.

The Margin of the Sky. This Fringe revival of Stewart Lemoine’s 2003 elusive and moving comedy about the act of creation is an historic occasion. It’s the last time you’ll see Teatro La Quindicina at the Fringe.

How come? Born at the very first Fringe in 1982 as a venture (All These Heels) by a little group of friends led by their then-unknown resident playwright, Teatro grew up with the festival, bringing original Lemoine comedies year after year to full houses. And since 2008 (when they returned to the Fringe after an absence of five years), Teatro’s Fringe appearance has been part of their four-show summer subscription seasons. But “as an Equity company producing a Fringe show (with Fringe ticket prices) as part of a full Equity contract for casts and crew,” as Lemoine explains, the costs can’t be covered. ‘And it means other shows in the season have to pay for that.”

The challenge of producing shows back to back without a break in a summer season has been “exhilarating but exhausting.” After 14 years, the company plans to produce seasons that are “more spread out” (November to July). 

So at age 40, Teatro bids farewell to its birthplace with “my only play that includes a character who’s a Canadian playwright,” says Lemoine. As in so many Lemoines, from Pith! to The Exquisite Hour, Happy Toes to The Glittering Heart, Leo is imagining a fantastical world from which he takes something important. And music, Schoenberg to be specific, is his entry point. 

Ingrid Hansen, Epidermis Circus, SNAFU. Photo by Jam Hamidi.

Epidermis Circus: In this new “spicy puppet cabaret” from Victoria’s SNAFU (Kit & Jane, Little Orange Man, The Merkin Sisters), part live animation, part physical comedy, Ingrid Hansen creates a variety show of characters using “freaky body parts,” her hands, mirrors, found objects: “there’s nothing in this show anyone would identify as ‘a puppet’.” She creates “little worlds and illusions” live at a table, and “they’re projected huge behind me livestream. So you’re seeing the movie and you’re seeing me make the movie.”

“It’s a dark comedy and a celebration of the human body, a post-pandemic healing ceremony.” Find out more about Hansen and SNAFU in a 12thnight post soon.

The Hunchback Variations, Northern Light Theatre. Poster photo by Ian Jackson, Epic Photography.

The Hunchback Variations. This intriguingly absurdist comedy by the Chicago playwright Mickle Maher is the production that Edmonton audiences almost got to see in the Northern Light Theatre season just past (another COVID cancellation). It’s a multi-scene panel discussion on sound between two of history’s most famous deaf artists, Beethoven and Quasimodo, the bell-ringer of Notre Dame. These unlikely collaborators are working to re-create the mysterious sound effect specified by Chekhov’s famously elusive stage direction in The Cherry Orchard. Check out 12thnight’s interview with director Davina Stewart from this past January here.

Plays By Bots. Photo by bots.

Plays By Bots. The future of theatre collaboration is here, and it’s wild (and a bit scary). The scripts are actually written by bots; Rapid Fire Theatre performers act them out, and then improvise the endings. Even this graphic for the show was created by a bot. What? “I honestly don’t understand it myself,” says RFT artistic director Matt Schuurman. “Every bit of it sounds like a fictional premise for a Fringe show, but it’s 100% real.”

Dreamers Cantata – A New Revue. A new revue by musical theatre specialists Plain Jane Theatre, who have combed the repertoire to focus on ground-breaking women and non-gender conforming artists. “Tougher songs than we’ve ever worked on,” says artistic director Kate Ryan of a list of musical theatre songwriters that includes Elizabeth Swados of Runaways and Rap Master Ronnie fame, Hadestown creator Anaïs Mitchell (who’s at the Folk Fest this weekend), Sara Bareilles (Waitress), Georgia Stitt, Micki Grant, Shaina Taub (Suffs, new this spring) and Edmonton jazz artist Mallory Chipman. Ryan directs a cast of five; the script is by playwright Ellen Chorley. 

Seth Gilfillan and Josh Travnik in Conjoined: A New Musical. Photo supplied.

Conjoined: A New Musical. Straight Edge Theatre, creators of Cult Cycle and Imaginary Friend, returns to the Fringe with an original rock(ish) musical. Sibling rivalry and the universal struggle to resist domination and find your own individual self get a palpable jolt from the fact that the two brothers are conjoined twins — and one’s fondest wish is to see the other dead. Amazingly, this is the second new musical of the season involving conjoined siblings (NLT’s Two-Headed Half-Hearted ran in April). Josh Travnik and Seth Gilfillan star, with a live three-piece band. (Meet Straight Edge’s Stephen Allred and The Erlking’s Chris Scott. see below, in an upcoming 12thnight post). 

Happy as Larry. OK, I’ll bite. What happened to Friar Lawrence after that fiasco in Romeo and Juliet? The guy has a lot to answer for, as both a herbalist and life coach, not to mention strategist. This solo show by the U.K. performer Richard Curnow proposes to follow up.

Fags in Space, Low Hanging Fruits. Photo supplied.

Fags in Space. A new play by Liam Salmon (Local Diva, Archangel, Silence of the Machine), an insightful and witty writer whose archive of work reveals a fascination with sci-fi/horror, the mysterious, the unknown . This one, which leans into reclaiming the old gay slur, is a queer rom-com, which suggests — can it be? — the possibility of happiness. It’s generated from the classic couples question: so how did you two meet?. Their story takes them through the cosmos.

(Thunder)CATS. As a survivor of watching WAY too many productions of Cats in way too many cities, I can’t possibly not see a satire of the Lloyd Webber con-cat-enation. It’s by the forces — Grindstone Theatre’s Byron Martin and resident composer Simon Abbott — that unleashed Jason Kenney’s Hot Boy Summer on a suspecting world this past season. Seeing it is kind of a moral and cultural obligation. 

(Thunder)CATS, Grindstone Theatre. Photo supplied.

“It takes the piss” (out of the Broadway musical), “using characters from the ‘80s cartoon Thundercats,” Martin explains. “It’s a series of character songs with no real plot, full of dancing, singing and humping…. The music is all original. And every song is directly a deep original cut into Cats, literally scene by scene, song by song…. It takes its job pretty seriously!” (laughter). Originally improvised in 2018 as part of a theme night at The 11 O’Clock Number, it comes with an entire cat-alogue of performers: nine actors wearing a lot of Lycra, and a live three-piece band led by the very accomplished Abbott. 

(Thunder)CATS got a mentorship boost at the Banff Centre from Bob Martin and Lisa Lambert (of the Fringe-turned-Broadway hit The Drowsy Chaperone). “They loved it; they said ‘you have to do it!’” and Lambert came to see the 2019 Fringe incarnation. COVID thwarted plans for a 2020 tour that would have included Edinburgh. 

How did Martin, Abbott et al get hooked to an obscure 80s cartoon? At Grindstone “we play cartoons on the TV behind the bar.” 

The Erlking, Scona Alumni Theatre Co. Photo supplied

The Erlking: a new musical. “If Midsommar and The Book of Mormon had a baby.” That, intriguingly, is how writer/composer/lyricist Chris Scott describes his new musical, fresh from a six-month workshop at Berklee College in Boston. He wrote The Erlking at 17, as a theatre student at Scona High; then “it went to bed for 12 years.” Meanwhile,  Scott got his BFA in musical theatre in Boston, and moved to New York with dreams of Broadway in his head. 

It’s on an un-Fringe-y scale, with a cast of 12, “a big, textured, lush orchestral score … musical theatre meets film score,” and 19 or 20 songs. And Scott’s Erlking isn’t the malign child-luring elf of Euro-lore, taken up by Goethe. “They’re a benevolent (gender-neutral) figure whose name has been smudged by the ruling classes.… It’s all about balance of power, abuse of power, faith, perspective.”

Jon Paterson, How I Met My Mother. Photo supplied.

How I Met My Mother. The versatile theatre artist Jon Paterson has been on the Fringe circuit for 25 years, in all kinds of roles in all kinds of shows. He’s toured with RibbitRepublic and Monster Theatre. He’s co-created with fellow Fringe artists (Inescapable, with Martin Dockery). He’s commanded the stage solo before now, memorably explosive in Daniel MacIvor’s House. How I Met My Mother is Paterson’s first solo-written Fringe show. It’s his own “bad-ass to caregiver story” as billed, of a man who leaves behind his raucous and wayward teen years to take care of his ailing mom. It’s been getting big buzz on the circuit.  

Crack in the Mirror. in honour of Guys in Disguise’s 35th anniversary at the Fringe, this third of the Orchard Crescent trilogy by Darrin Hagen and Trevor Schmidt takes the women of the ladies’ auxiliary  into the ‘70s. Find more in an upcoming 12thnight post about the groundbreaking company that marries theatre and drag and changed the course of gay history in this town.  

Cheryl Jameson, Michelle Todd, Kristin Johnston in Destination Vegas. Photo by Justin Gambin.

Damn, it’s happened again. This list of possibilities has gotten out of hand, and I haven’t even mentioned Fake n’ Bake, a new solo play, the first she’s written by herself, by Girl Brain’s Ellie Heath (more about her in an upcoming 12thnight post). Or Destination Vegas, a sequel to Trevor Schmidt’s riotous Destination Wedding. Or The Big Sad, a new Jessy Ardern play about grief for kids by the inventive indie Fox Den Collective (Queen Lear Is Dead, S.I.S.T.E.R). It’s not in the program but has four performances (Stage 3) in the daytime slots formerly occupied by Undiscovered Country. And how about Pressure by up-and-comer Amanda Samuelson, Nextfest’s first official foray into the Fringe as a producer? 

And this: on a risk-enhancement agenda, there’s White Guy on Stage Talking. For one thing it’s by the playwriting team of Jake Tkaczyk and Brandon the Moustache. For another, its warning list, second to none, taps into modern anxiety pretty comprehensively. “Violence, cartoonish violence, nudity, sexual content, death, suicide, Adult language/content, eating disorder/body image, mental illness/disorders, drugs/alcohol, religious content, political content, strobe lights, gunshots, smoke/fog.” Yup, I’m intrigued.

Enough of list-making already. It’s time to start fringing. (Tickets, schedule, and show information: fringetheatre.ca.)

 

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We are approaching our Destination: Fringe tickets go on sale today at noon

Posted on August 3, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

It’s been a long pandemical journey — uphill, full of stops and re-starts and detours, on a bumpy road, with skimpy signage, in the dark. Sometimes it seemed as if we’d never get there; sometimes we wondered if we’d only dreamed it all.  

But now, fellow travellers, our festive Destination is finally at hand. We’re nearly there; yes, there is a ‘there’ there. Tickets for Destination Fringe, the 41st annual edition of Edmonton’s mighty summer theatre extravaganza (live, Aug. 11 to 21 ), still the continent’s biggest and oldest, go on sale today at noon. And there’s more than one route to tickets.

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You can order them online (fringetheatre.ca). You can call (780-409-1910). You can show up in person at the Fringe’s central Arts Barns box office (10330 84 Ave.) or TIX on the Square in Churchill Square downtown. When the festivities begin, you can visit any of the five satellite box offices, including the Garneau Theatre, La Cité francophone, the Roxy Theatre on 124th St., by the Fringe entrance (83rd Ave. and 104 St.), and on 85th Ave. between 104th and Gateway Blvd. This year’s time-saver innovation: e-tickets. 

The top ticket price has remained the same for years. Fringe artists set the price, to a $13 maximum, theirs to take home. And Fringers pay the festival a $3 service fee on top of that. So you’ll be shelling out $16 tops for a show ticket. This year the ticket prices, listed online and in the glossy 12-buck 146-page Fringe program, are inclusive.  

Most artists opt for the max (and after the couple of drought years they’ve had, no wonder), as you’ll discover touring the guide or the website. But there are exceptions I discovered leafing through the program: Charade, a stage version of the murder caper, is $13; so is My Name Is Rachel Corrie, a solo drama culled from a real-life diary. The YEG Youth Poetry Jam is $9; St. Kilda is $15, and so is the Fringe’s own ever-riotous Late-Night Cabaret…. 

The sweetest deal for Fringe travellers? the Frequent Fringer Pass ($120 for 10 tickets) and the Double Fringer Pass ($240 for 20 tickets) — two tickets per show per pass holder, subject to availability. But there are precious few, and historically they sell out in a flash. 

There are discounts for students and seniors at many shows. And, in the spirit of spontaneity built into fringing, there are artist-instigated daily discounts, recorded online and at all box offices, designed to amplify the audience. 

And so, my friends, we’re poised to return to fringing, in the place where that verb was invented. True, Destination Fringe isn’t on the gargantuan scale of the rampaging Where The Wild Things Fringe in pre-pandemic 2019, with its 260 shows in 50-plus venues. But it’s more than double the 64-show lineup of last year’s creatively trimmed edition Together We Fringe. The program isn’t the thickest ever, but it’s hefty, full of possibilities, and still a great upper-body toner when carried in a backpack on a jog between venues. 

“Re-growth” is the operative word, says Fringe director Murray Utas of this year’s edition. As the audience returns to live performance in these late-pandemic times, the question, for him, is “what is the experience you’re creating? Experience vs. size…. How big do we need to be?”

There are 164 indoor shows at Destination Fringe, in 27 venues. Eight of these (a reduction in number from the usual 11) ) are “official,” programmed by lottery. The rest are BYOVs, acquired and outfitted by artists themselves, most (but not all) in or near Old Strathcona.

Some are bona fide theatres like the Varscona or L’UniThéâtre or the theatre at College St.-Jean. An assortment have other lives — as churches or community halls, clubs, a cabaret, a community hall, a university auditorium…. The four BYOVs in the French Quarter at La Cité francophone and the College St.-Jean across the street, have 29 shows among them (not counting the long-running hit poutine at Café Bicyclette). The Grindstone Comedy Theatre curates 25 shows at four venues of varying sizes. And here’s a first for 2022: Theatre Network’s two theatres at the spiffy new Roxy on 124th Street are Fringe BYOVs, each running four shows.

Pêhonân (Cree for gathering place), last year’s sold-out initiative in dedicating one venue to Indigenous artists, has expanded its reach outdoors. Josh Languedoc, the Fringe’s director of Indigenous strategic planning and a playwright/performer himself (Rocko and Nakota: Tales From The Land), has assembled an eight-show series featuring local Treaty 6 artists for the ATB Outdoor Stage, ᐄᓃᐤ (ÎNÎW) River Lot 11∞ (the Indigenous Art Park in Queen Elizabeth Park, the KidsFringe stage, the pêhonân teepee (between the Backstage Theatre and the Strathcona Performing Arts Centre). The teepee is where you’ll find a sharing circle, bannock, smudging and more each Friday and Saturday at 6 p.m.  

After a two-year pandemical hiatus, the KidsFringe returns to Light Horse Park (daily 10:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m.), free, with a line-up of shows and activities (all arranged by Girl Brain’s Alyson Dicey).

And at Destination Fringe a bona fide Fringe tradition (interruptus) is restored. After a hiatus of, oh, a couple of decades, there’s a welcoming all-ages Fringe Street Dance on Fringe Eve, Aug. 10 (6:30 onward), with bands that includes the Halluci Nation, Sudan Archives, Sampler Cafe, and  tzadeka & the Murder Hornets. The first-ever Fringe Street Dance was in 1984; an up-and-comer named k.d. lang played to a crowd of 3,500.

Which brings us to the fringer’s alluring question: what to see in the 164-show world of Destination Fringe. And that’s something 12thnight.ca can help with. Don’t let an intriguing question be a daunting one: stay tuned to this very site for encouragement, suggestions, features, reviews. 

It’s a theatre town, fellow travellers. And we have the Destination to prove it. I’m hoping you’re finding the theatre coverage on  12thnight.ca, my free independent online site, entertaining and worthwhile. And I’m hoping, too, that you’ll be able to chip in to my Patreon campaign, with a monthly amount to support its continuation. Click here. 

And let’s set forth.  

     

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Was it Professor Plum, in the library, with the …? The lead-pipe cinch fun of Clue at the Citadel, a review

Posted on July 29, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Rachel Bowron, Christina Nguyen, Alexander Ariate, John Ullyatt, Darla Biccum, Rochelle Laplante, Julien Arnold in Clue, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

“Let the game begin.”

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What fun. A high-style midsummer comedy whodunnit with all the trimmings, and a larky air of high camp about it. 

That’s Clue, currently dropping clues, suspicions, weapons, suspects, and dead bodies through a mysterious manor house on the Citadel’s Shoctor stage — and scattering throwaway quips as they land. It need hardly be said that it’s a dark and stormy night, the power is very apt to go out, and the telephone lines are in a shockingly precarious state. 

When the suave butler with the plummy accent (John Ullyatt) speaks of the game as being “afoot,” he’s not kidding. The game is on its feet, and the players are in constant motion.  

Sandy Ruskin’s stage adaptation of the star-stocked 1985 movie (inspired by the classic board game you’ve always played at the cottage) is set in the 50s, the era of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, just outside Washington. “A climate of fear and suspicion” says the voice from the TV. 

Clue, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price

The play introduces the characters at the outset, all with murky D.C. connections. And in Nancy McAlear’s production, they arrive, invitations in hand, with a flourish at the front door of Boddy Manor. They’re introduced by Wadsworth, a figure of Jeeves-like aplomb and inscrutability in Ullyatt’s performance, who specifies that as per their invitations, pseudonyms are de rigueur. And, costumed amusingly by designer Leona Brausen in ’50s regalia, they’re played to riotous cartoon proportions by the cast.  

The representative of the military is Colonel Mustard (Julien Arnold in a very funny performance as dim blusterer with malaprop tendencies, invariably a perfect half-beat behind the conversation). Rachel Bowron is the icy Mrs. White, a Washington socialite and serial widow. The tentative, accident-prone Mr. Green (Alexander Ariate) is a gay, which is to say closeted, Republican with a State Department desk job. Mrs Peacock (Darla Biccum) is a shrill church-y Senator’s wife with a mickey in her purse. Professor Plum (Doug Mertz) is a self-assured de-licensed doctor (“it’s a pleasure for you to meet me”) who now “does research” for WHO. The va-va-voom Miss Scarlet (Rochelle Laplante) is a business person with a clientele that’s exclusively male. 

Clue, Citadel Theatre. Photo by Nanc Price.

They all have guilty secrets, and they’re all being blackmailed. And as Wadsworth informs them, they’re about to meet the blackmailer who’s also their host. Mr. Boddy (Steven Greenfield) carries a briefcase of evidence, and distributes gift bags each containing a weapon (yup, the candlestick, the wrench, the lead pipe …). The power goes out. And when the lights come on lo and behold Mr. Boddy is dead, and the police will soon arrive.

He will not be the evening’s only corpse. And the suspects, including the pert French maid Yvette (Christina Nguyen) and the psychotic cook (Maya Baker), scramble to identify a killer on the loose who may be one of them. Or not.

Indispensable to the fun is Scott Reid’s set. Like the characters it is in constant motion; actually, on many occasions it’s the cast running on the spot (or dropping dead) and the set moving —  in ingenious ways from the kitchen to the conservatory, the drawing room to the lounge, the dining room to the library, back to the hall. The six closed doors are just the start of it. In this the set is assisted, with great pizzaz, by Patrick Beagan’s lighting, and lack thereof. Michael Holland’s quirky, allusive murder mystery music (supplemented by sound designer Allison Lynch) is fun, too. 

This is all very silly, at a level of silliness only achievable by theatrical resourcefulness and impeccable timing. It escalates in speed and intensity, and panic sets in. There are spectacular pratfalls, inspired physical comedy from all participants, danse macabres with stiffs, re-spooling in reverse of scenes but with different outcomes, and in one case a very funny virtuoso re-play of the entire play by one character . Shamelessly entertaining. Shameless, and entertaining.

REVIEW

Clue

Theatre: Citadel

Written by: Sandy Rustin, with additional materials by Hunter Foster and Eric Price, based on Paramount Pictures 1985 movie with screenplay by Jonathan Lynn, based on Hasbro board game

Directed by: Nancy McAlear

Starring: Alexander Ariate, Julien Arnold, Maya Baker, Darla Biccum, Rachel Bowron, Steven Greenfield, Rochelle Laplante, Doug Mertz, Christina Nguyen, John Ullyatt

Running: through Aug. 7

Tickets: citadeltheatre.com, 780-425-1820

 

 

 

 

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Sexy Laundry at the Mayfield, a review

Posted on July 28, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Glenn Nelson and Davina Stewart in Sexy Laundry, Mayfield Theatre. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

In Sexy Laundry, the hit 2005 sitcom by Vancouver playwright Michele Riml currently onstage at the Mayfield, we meet Henry and Alice, a middle-aged couple whose 25-year-old marriage has gone stale.  

At the instigation of the latter (and with the reluctant participation of the former) they’ve checked into a high-end hotel for a dirty weekend, designed to put the fizz back into the marital cocktail. In this adventure in relationship repair, they’re armed with a self-help guide, Sex For Dummies, from the library.

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It’s the first of a series of antique sight gags — which will later include a whip for her and a TV clicker for him — that add to a mountain of evidence that relationships aren’t the only thing in life that can go mouldy. The Canadian play repertoire has its share of best-before’s too. And it takes very game and spirited actors to dig selflessly into this thinly spread well-trampled turf. 

Kudos then to Patricia Darbasie’s production, and to Davina Stewart and Glenn Nelson, who are real pros, and gifted clowns. Their playground is a strikingly convincing upscale hotel room artfully created on the Mayfield stage by designer John Dinning. And the costumes by Leona Brausen are a plot device in themselves.  

Anyhow, back to Sex For Dummies. It explains why we will be confronted later in the play by other related sight gags — Henry dancing in his boxers, for example, or Alice checking out sexy girth-clenching poses in the mirror — designed to remind us of the comical tribulations of aging. And in Sexy Laundry it’s meant to trigger couples discussions in which Henry and Alice review their middle-aged grievances, disappointments, fantasies and humiliations.  “I’m sharing my needs with you,” says Alice, quoting from the guide. Henry looks understandably glum. 

Gender disparities and stereotyping are the framework on which Sexy Laundry is hung out. Henry the stick-in-the-mud likes to unwind after work with an hour of TV news. Talking? “You married an engineer not a poet.” Alice, talking the talk, wants to “reconnect” and “find what we had.” She worries that he’s more attracted to the TV clicker than exploring her bod — is it the extra pounds? Is sex something you do during commercials? She points out that men, not women, are allowed to age and be sexy. James Bond gets older; “his girlfriends never do.” True, Alice, true. 

Glenn Nelson and Davina Stewart in Sexy Laundry, Mayfield Theatre. Photo supplied.

Their fantasies when they can finally think up any, don’t jibe, needless to say. Hers run to sexy Italian waiters, his to a vision of family dinner in which “the children laugh; they think I’m funny.” And then the kids do the dishes. 

It’s contentment vs self-improvement, appreciating what you have vs making it even better. “Nothing is as good as it could be,” objects Henry, the one with the practical streak. “That’s life.” Will they recapture the spark of yore, and resolve stuff,  in a ‘heartwarming’ way, instead of “throwing away” 25 years of marriage? I leave you to this agonizing suspense. Order a signature Mayfield cocktail. 

Calling a sitcom clichéd isn’t exactly cutting-edge criticism. It’s not that gender clichés haven’t contributed to the rise of the modern sitcom. I’m thinking of the Kramdens in the still very funny classic The Honeymooners. Sutton Foster’s series Younger is all about aging. Think of all the cliché dads on TV. It’s just that Sexy Laundry just strings so many clichés together; it’s a veritable repository, with no real attention to momentum, or how many should be discarded (or upgraded or diverted) in the interests of comic currency. This is a play that doesn’t even bother to conceal how calculating it is.

So Nelson and Stewart have their work cut out for them, forging a time-worn relationship from thin cut-outs and self-help-speak. It takes a plucky spirit to wrest laughter from a scene in which a middle-aged woman says Fuck a lot. Or an engineer who can’t get the damn clicker to work, unlocks dance music by accident instead, and wiggles his butt. Rueful paunch-clutching has its place in the contemporary comedy, who could deny it?, but it isn’t automatically funny. Both actors rise admirably to the occasion. 

As in laundry demos on YouTube, it’s not so much what’s being laundered, as the care that goes into folding it. 

REVIEW

Sexy Laundry

Theatre: Mayfield Dinner Theatre

Written by: Michele Riml

Directed by: Patricia Darbasie

Starring: Glenn Nelson, Davina Stewart

Running: through Aug. 7

Tickets: mayfieldtheatre.ca, 780-483-4051

 

  

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Are we there yet? Sneak peeks of Destination Fringe, at the 3rd annual Fringe Telethon Wednesday

Posted on July 25, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Destination Fringe, edition #41 of Edmonton’s game-changer city-definer of a summer theatre extravaganza, is within sight, live and unpredictable.

First, before the fringing begins Aug. 11, there’s a golden chance for meaningful audience participation. The third annual Edmonton Fringe Telethon happens live on Fringe TV Wednesday, noon to 8 (780-448-9000). It’s hosted by that nouveau-vaudevillian duo festival director Murray Utas and Edmonton Fringe Theatre executive director Megan Dart. And it’s your opportunity to help secure the future of our beloved August festivities.

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There’ll be live music from performers like singer/songwriter/actor Kaeley Jade Wiebe. You’ll see sneak previews of Fringe shows, among them Andrés Moreno’s multi-media puppet show Doni!. And there’s celebratory news. On the eve of Destination Fringe, Aug. 10, starting at 6:30, we’re all invited to “a big ol’ dance party,” says Utas of the all-ages free street party at McIntyre Park. The Halluci Nation, Sudan Archives, Sampler Cafe, and tzadeka & the Murder Hornets take over the outdoor stage for the big community launch celebration (just like the olden days of the Fringe, and not seen for many many years). “There’s no other agenda…. Just come and move your body!”

The Fringe Telethon has a storied history in the last three tumultuous years. In 2020, when the unthinkable happened and the 39th annual Fringe became The Fringe That Never Was, the Telethon was a way for audiences to ensure that Edmonton’s best-ever invention would survive a crushing $3 million loss. For last year’s Together We Fringe, in which our the Fringe returned to live (and turned the big four-oh), the Fringe Telethon returned for a second edition. 

And now, the third annual Telethon, live from Fringe headquarters at the ATB Financial Arts Barn Wednesday. Which is the very day you can start studying up and hatching your Destination Fringe plans for the 164-show roster of Fringe shows running Aug. 11 to 21 in some 27 venues (eight of them programmed by lottery, the remaining 19 BYOVs programmed by artists themselves).  

Tickets go on sale Aug. 3 at noon (online at fringetheatre.ca, at 780-409-1910, and in person at the Fringe central box office (10330 84 Ave.). This year’s queue-busting innovation: e-tickets.   

Show information will be online Wednesday (fringetheatre.ca). And the $12 Festival Guides are ready Wednesday for sale at the Fringe Grounds Cafe, the Old Strathcona Arts Emporium (10309 82 Ave.), Theatre Garage (3711 98 St.), Audreys Books downtown (10702 Jasper Ave.), Glass Bookshop (10242 106 St.), The Tesserae (6421 112 Ave.), and The Sherwood Park Bookworm (120 Wye Road). 

True, Destination Fringe is not as massive in dimensions as the Fringe’s button-bursting 2019 edition (260-plus shows in 50-plus venues). But it’s still expansive and full of possibilities, more than doubled from last year’s cautious 64-show dozen-venue re-entry into the world of live performance. It’s an organic reasonable “re-growth” as Utas puts it. “How do we grow in a way that’s not too big for our resources? 2019 tipped off the rails a few times….” 

“How big do we need to be?” That, for Utas, is a crucial Fringe question, along with “What is the experience we’re creating?” as the audience returns to fringing in this late-pandemic world. And growth will happen naturally in response. 

The annual Fringe Telethon is a way to ensure it keeps happening. Tune in to Fringe TV, and call 780-448-9000. As Utas puts it, “can you imagine Edmonton without the Fringe?” None of us can.

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Four decades of playing without a script: the Rapid Fire Theatre story is now a book

Posted on July 22, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Rapid Fire Theatre. Photo by Andrew Paul.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

The thing you’ve just got to love about Rapid Fire Theatre is that everything that makes you anxious (if not out and out crazy) in life is delightful to them. It’s their high-octane fuel, their motivation, their very raison d’être.

[I refer to uncertainty and risk, the not knowing in advance, the sweaty scramble to make improbable things work, the last-minute adjustments to plans that have fallen through, the figuring on your feet when you discover that there actually are no plans and maybe never were, the making of mistakes in front of people, the taking of leaps off promontories that aren’t even on the map.]

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And Edmonton’s premier improv company, an award-winner here, across the country and abroad, has the distinguished history to prove it. A new book about Rapid Fire’s first 40 years of providing spontaneous entertainment and provoking spontaneous bursts of laughter here, across the country and abroad, demonstrates in vivid detail that their own story may be unscripted, but it has a powerful narrative. We Made It All Up: Forty Years of Rapid Fire Theatre is by Paul Blinov, an RFT improv star himself. And it’s breezy, charming, and fun to read.

As Blinov recounts, the Rapid Fire Theatre trajectory started small. And it was in a way that was intertwined with theatre in this theatre town.

It was 1981, and little Theatre Network was ensconced in a very out-of-the-way north end location — OK, dive — in a defunct Kingdom Hall near the old Coliseum. TN Artistic director Stephen Heatley invited improv pioneer Keith Johnstone (founder of Calgary’s Loose Moose Theatre) to town to do a workshop of his improv “invention” theatresports — a fast and furious, short-form, competitive team sport.  

And so it began, Theatresports every Sunday evening. I remember occasionally being one of the trio of judges, holding up a score card and getting booed or cheered. And no matter what happened, or didn’t, onstage, the players seemed to be having a lot of fun (in lieu of making money). In true improv fashion, as Blinov tells the story, it gathered fans and players — actors and comics, high school class clowns, techies and musicians as it went: the Pied Piper effect endemic to the art form. In the chapter titled “The Smell of People Being There” Blinov quotes Wes Borg, a Theatresports geek who became part of the legendary spin-off sketch troupe Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie. “My mom thought it was a cult…. She was kind of right.”

Ah, the addictive thrill of spontaneity, with its high risk of flame-out. The magnetism of improv, for both the performer and the audience, is a fascinating mystery to us ordinary mortals. Is it, in the end, the lure of pure, raw live-ness? No one’s addressed it better than Blinov; he consults a whole range of improvisers to assist. “It was really formative,” as the ever-droll Borg says. “It made me into the poverty-stricken artist I am today.” 

Actor-turned-improviser Patti Stiles, who became the Rapid Fire artistic director later in the story (she’s now a top-drawer Australia-based improv guru and author who does workshops world-wide a la Keith Johnstone), was drawn to the galvanizing effect of improv on an audience. They were embraced and enlivened, she found, in ways that scripted theatre rarely managed. 

Gradually, exponentially, Edmonton’s Theatresports players found themselves an estimable part of a circuit of improv tournaments that included the U.S., Europe and Australia. Rapid Fire’s Improvaganza, running at the Gateway Theatre through Saturday,  is genuinely international in its lineup. And, amazingly, it always has been, almost by definition. There’s just something contagiously cross-cultural and expansive about improv (not least perhaps because of the drop-in spirit and the heartbreaking modesty of financial expectations). And Edmonton audiences have been the beneficiaries. 

When Theatresports became its own company in 1988 and stopped sleeping on Theatre Network’s couch (so to speak, an image that should probably not be pursued), Rapid Fire’s story gathered structure and homes. As you’ll see from Blinov’s account (chapter three, “Some Adulting Had To Happen”) the opposing forces of natural comradely anarchy and the requirements of being a theatre company (having a bank account and knowing how much is in it, paying rent on a place, having an artistic director) are a necessary tension that runs through the Rapid Fire story. 

After all, Rapid Fire takes its cue from the time-honoured improv dictum about saying Yes to creative impulses (instead of ‘well, maybe let’s think about it for a sec, or the more cautious ‘No! What, are you nuts!?’). As an historical imperative that has its dangers, of course. For one thing it urges expansion over cutbacks, and that’s sometimes a nail-biter as every theatre company knows.  

Theatresports on parade. Photo by Russ Hewitt.

Rapid Fire found a home first at the old Phoenix Downtown. Then the improvisers crossed the river to Strathcona and the college-kid part of town, and did hit late-night shows at an ex-firehall-turned-theatre called Chinook. And Rapid Fire was part of the theatre consortium that undertook to save Chinook from commercial re-sale (a shoe store? you’ve got to be kidding!). Enter the Varscona. When Rapid Fire got too big and busy to squeeze into Varscona scheduling after 20 years, they moved downtown for eight seasons to occupy the Citadel’s Zeidler Hall, not an easy space to have improv fun in.  

As Blinov details carefully, but in an easeful way, artistic directors changed; interestingly, four of them (including Stiles, Jacob Banigan, Kevin Gillese, Amy Shostak) who’ve taken their careers elsewhere return regularly to do shows with Rapid Fire. What other theatre company in town can say as much?

There have been crises, to be sure.  A manager embezzled, and then vanished. Debt has threatened to topple the whole operation more than once. But somehow creativity has prevailed, and so has the audience. 

The Coven, Rapid Fire Theatre. Photo by Billy Wong

Spin-offs into sketch comedy, film, and even full-length plays happened under the Rapid Fire flag. A seminal event was the introduction of long-form Chimprov, for which performers got offered a cut of the door. Blinov quotes Banigan: “It was like beer money, gas money. But as a token, it was a big gesture. It meant a lot to suddenly get a little bit of money for the stuff we love to do anyway.” And Chimprov, with its array of small troupes within the larger company, continues to be a staple of the Rapid Fire menu.

Speaking of which, Blinov includes an amusing sample improv “menu” from an early Chimprov format. There’s a choice of appetizers (“Typewriter scene” or “monologue” or “one event from many points of view”). Then the soup course (including “Story Out Of Order” or “Blow It Out Your Ass”), Tonight’s Special, Dessert (“available by enthusiastic request”). 

Rapid Fire’s expertise with experimental long-form improv, especially genres and dramatic storytelling, is noted in improv circles world-wide. This is one well-connected company. And that isn’t unrelated to its close ties, in performers, spirit, and skills, to the theatre community. Which sets Edmonton apart from other improv hotbeds. 

Rapid Fire Theatre general manager Sarah Huffman and artistic director Matt Schuurman

Like Rapid Fire itself, the story gains momentum in the current era (at the 2019 Fringe, Rapid Fire hosted an entire venue devoted exclusively to improv). And it’s not least because of their unsurpassed ingenuity, both technical and artistic under artistic director Matt Schuurman, in improvising vis-à-vis COVID-ian restrictions and workarounds. These days, at 41, one of the longest-running improv companies in the country is expanding their programming and outreach, a Schuurman priority as they reno a home of their own, the old Telephone Exchange in Strathcona.

It’s a great story of creative waywardness and smarts, virtuoso improv skills and zest for experiment. You can get yourself a copy of We Made It All Up at any Rapid Fire show (now at Improvaganza and soon at the Fringe) or on the Rapid Fire website.

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Summer theatre adventures in New York

Posted on July 20, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

Jaquel Spivey in A Strange Loop, photo by Marc J Franklin.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

New York City last week — 

It started in a heart-warming cross-border exchange, with trimmings. In the mezzanine of the Lyceum Theatre on West 45th 15 minutes before curtain on a Thursday night performance of the Pulitzer- and Tony Award-winning musical A Strange Loop. 

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So there we were, finding ourselves sitting next to an amiable Brooklynite in his 60s and his husband (‘welcome to our row!”). They’d come to Toronto to get married back when it wasn’t an American option, so were  kindly disposed to Canada, and Canadian theatre (and knew of Edmonton from, you guessed!, the Fringe). Somehow inevitably, it turned out he was an emerging playwright — ‘emerging’ isn’t a matter of age, after all — after a career as an IT expert. And he was excited about workshops of “my stuff” in Miami, an upcoming production in a Big Apple community theatre, honourable mentions in 10-minute play competitions….  

Jaquel Spivey in A Strange Loop. Photo by Marc J Franklin

It seemed like a sign, a possible loop of its own. Especially since A Strange Loop is, in its own very meta originality, the defiant manifesto of a playwright in progress. “Big, black, and queer-ass American Broadway,” it’s a veritable loop-de-loop of a musical, about a gay Black man struggling to write a musical called A Strange Loop about a gay Black man struggling to write a musical called A Strange Loop about a gay Black man … himself. 

He’s Usher (the endearing Jaquel Spivey, direct to Broadway from theatre school), who works, in another loop, as an usher at The Lion King. And the challenging, messy, funny/angry musical by Michael R. Jackson happens at intermission, which is amusing in itself. Tormented and exasperated, Usher’s Black queer artist identity is assailed and undermined by his own Thoughts, six of them, the saboteurs within. They’re wonderfully performed by the ensemble in Stephen Brackett’s production, who appear through elevator doors and include Daily Self-Loathing and Sexual Ambivalence. 

Not only is Usher is flailing against the white entertainment status quo, and his own “Inner White Girl,’ as he puts it (not to mention the shark tank of dating sites where low self-esteem is a trail of blood in the water), he’s up against the paradigms of Blackness. And this classic: his parents are not only old-school artist-averse but out-and-out homophobic. 

If he must be an artist (god forbid), at least he should emulate the Black commercialism of Taylor Perry, reigning monarch of the Black gospel show (A Strange Loop pauses to stage an extended sample). And there are other pressures, too, on Usher from “acceptable” Black narratives like police violence or slavery — to give audience allies “something intersectional to hold onto.” 

It doesn’t seem to quite hold together, and the whole thing is a bit repetitive (well, it is about loops). But the playfulness, invention and fierce humour of it are unexpected. And the songs and lyrics have a smart, caustic wit to them. A Black musical comedy set in the conflicted mind of a Black queer artist about Black queer experience, riotous and poignant, is a one-of-a-kind. The run has just been extended through January 2023.  

At the Public Theatre in the East Village, where you need both a mask and a proof of vaccine, Fat Ham, very funny, joyful, and  insightful, is a riotous take on … Hamlet. For a good time, with dancing, great food, karaoke, Elsinore’s always been the place, right?

Fat Ham, Public Theatre

“Who says tragedy has to be tragic?” is the billing. James Ijames 2022 Pulitzer Prize winner takes us into the heart of a Black family who run a North Carolina barbecue joint — at a raucous backyard party where “ay, there’s the rub” really sticks. Juicy, the Hamlet of the piece, is an endearingly morose, exasperated possibly queer Southern college kid, taking Human Resources (the wit of Fat Ham marinates through and through). And he’s played by an endearing actor Marcel Spears who commands a whole lexicon of physical whatever shrugs and eye-rolls, surrounded as he is by the most maddening relatives who lament his “softness.” 

Will Juicy find himself and come into his own?   

He wears a Momma’s Boy T-shirt, a gift from his doting ma (Nikki Crawford), freshly widowed, who’s just gotten married to her late hubby’s bro, Rev. Hamlet’s best pal Horatio is reinvented as an entertaining wise-ass with lurid prophetic video game-type dreams. And the Ophelia and Laertes siblings are re-cast too, with sexual identity crises of their own. 

Bits of the Shakespeare text are expertly woven through Fat Ham. And a Shakespeare play propelled by revenge, escalating in violence and leaving the stage littered with dead bodies, takes on a joyful cast. The Black characters, in effect, just refuse to be in a tragedy. The matinee audience, me among them, had a wonderful time. 

I felt lucky to see the revival of Company (which goes on tour at the end of the month). For one thing, who wants to pass up the chance to see a great cast including Patti Lupone with a 14-piece orchestra to accompany some of the wittiest, most insightful songs in the musical theatre canon? The seminal 1970 Sondheim musical that radically had snapshots made into a group portrait of married life (instead of a story), was famously gender-flipped this season by the Brit director Marianne Elliott. Bobby, the eternal bachelor afraid of commitment, has become Bobbie (Katrina Lenk). And she stands at the perimeter of her circle of friends, couples in the ambivalent marital landscape of the big city — the very one where you can leave the theatre, have dinner outside on a soft summer evening, and discuss. 

I’d be quite prepared to see Company as a period piece, despite what time has done to the waning cultural imperative to be married. But to me, the update works just fine, since Bobbie has the additional impetus, as a woman in her ‘30s, of the biological clock.

What seems timeless in a much different way is American Buffalo, which dates from the decades before the playwright went right-wing batshit crazy. David Mamet’s high-speed go-nowhere 1975 back comedy about the small-time two-bit hustler underbelly of  American capitalism and masculinity, was back. A superb cast — Sam Rockwell, Laurence Fishburne and Darren Criss — bit into the signature Mamet staccato rhythms as a trio of collaborators plotting a heist you know from the start is doomed by their own fundamental ineptitude and venality.  

It happened at Circle in the Square, a Broadway theatre in which the audience is wrapped around a long gangway stage on three sides. The set was a junk shop absolutely crammed, every which way, with stuff. And since the audience was so close (we were four rows away, in the cheap seats), it was the first Broadway production to step forward and extend the mask requirement at least for the summer from the July 1 cut-off where it became optional. Other theatres immediately followed suit.

photo by Alan Kellogg

At every show I saw in New York, incidentally, the audience was masked. No refreshments were allowed in the theatre (the usual dodge for pulling down a mask and never pulling it up again). And the requirement was strictly enforced by ushers with flashlights. “Sir, pull that mask over your nose, too; it’s not doing any good that way. Or you’ll have to leave.” Note to Canadian theatres: confidence-inspiring.  

The Minutes, Studio 54.

The toughest-minded show I saw was The Minutes by Tracy Letts  (August: Osage Country) at Studio 54. Set at a small-town council meeting — the minutes of last week’s meeting aren’t yet ready for distribution — it starts as a funny, deftly detailed satire of the niggling minutiae of American democracy, Our Town division, at work. And the ending, which I mustn’t tell you about, takes down American complacency about its history in a way that is truly shocking. The cast, which included a fair complement of Steppenwolf actors and one Canadian (Noah Reid of Schitt’s Creek fame), was terrific. 

As for many of you, dear readers, it had been a while, two-and-a-half years and a few trip cancellations, since I’d been in New York. And it felt special to be back, in the summer, walking through Central Park en route to the theatre. A lot of favourite little cafes hadn’t made it through COVID, to be sure. But theatre, live and in-person, had.

It had weathered all sorts of punishing setbacks and difficult industry adjustments (the “understudy” lists were as long as the casts). Not only that (judging by a small sample), Broadway theatre was welcoming surprising, challenging fare, and excitingly diverse talent, in addition to the usual Great (traditionally) White Way array of musical blockbusters. You could feel the future expanding, in spite of it all. And that felt fine.

     

 

  

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The Cirque du Soleil is back and the joint is bugged: OVO, a review

Posted on July 14, 2022 by Liz Nicholls

OVO, Cirque du Soleil. Photo supplied.

By Liz Nicholls, 12thnight.ca

At the outset, a giant egg sits onstage, full of mystery, ready for the hatching. 

With OVO (Portuguese for egg), the Cirque du Soleil, a storied Canadian company fallen on hard times and dormant for two years,  returns to life (and to Edmonton for seven performances). It’s with a show that premiered in Montreal in 2009 under the Grand Chapiteau, and was reworked for short runs in large-capacity arenas in 2016. And it’s in a corporate venue, Rogers Place, where nets normally receive pucks, not acrobats launching themselves to earth from trapezes.

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The egg glows and cracks open to reveal a world of fantastical insects — in perpetual motion, hanging upside down, balancing horizontally suspended by one feeler, scaling vertical walls, twirling lyrically off giant tendrils. It’s a world where the normal rules of propulsion and probability, not to mention the law of gravity, just do not apply. And we see that kingdom from the bug’s eye view, where every blade of grass, every stalk and root, is gargantuan. Under every leaf is an insect waiting for a chance to fly through the air.  

In the production written and directed by the Brazilian choreographer Deborah Colker, it’s the playground for some 52 circus performers of  virtuoso skills, acrobatic and contortionist, limber and bendable beyond beyond any reasonable human expectation. They’re invented by Liz Vandal’s witty fantasy costumes, an entomologist’s delight. And when they’re not airborne and and swinging and whirling and leaping, they do a high-speed insectoid scuttle. They pop up from holes on Gringo Cardia’s set, dominated by a climbing wall on which a striking projection-scape plays — close-ups of grass blades or the veins of leaves.

OVO, Cirque du Soleil. Photo supplied.

The acts are, as you might expect, first-rate. We see a troupe of red ants slither up and slide down a pole upside down, in squish-defying near-misses, as a chorus of grasshoppers watch. A gorgeous dragonfly balances upside down on one “hand” (or is it “foot”)? A sexy spider bends herself into impossible contortions. A whole troupe of death-defying gold-plated scarabs fling each other through the air on trapezes high above the stage. A cotillion of crickets launch themselves from trampolines and perch atop the wall; I thought they were geckoes, who have no notion of what right side up might mean, but then I wasn’t a biology major. A sinister red-and-black fire bug emerges from flames and wraps himself around spinning hoops. A caterpillar pulses in a chrysalis on a pole, spins silk, and emerges as a beautiful butterfly. 

There’s a host bug, a corpulent red-shelled beetle with a gift of the gab (he laughs clicks away at a great rate, and occasionally approaches a human language). There’s a bit of a story, though not a framing one; it’s more a running gag, and it belongs to the clowns. A “foreigner,” a spiny blue fly arrives onstage burdened by an ovo so heavy it leaves him gasping. Yup, it’s one of those romances where the guy brings carry-on baggage. 

He’s immediately smitten by a flirtatious charmer of a ladybug. And their on-again off-again courtship weaves its way through the show between acts. Unlike most of the Cirque canon, the clowning involves minimal audience participation — due to the venue, and no doubt to an ongoing pandemic.    

This isn’t the Cirque’s signature theatre of surreal imagery and mythic resonance, almost always framed by stage observers for us to observe observing. Unlike, say, Varekai, another tent-arena reinvention which arrived at the old Coliseum in 2015 and landed Icarus in a forest of exotic insects and creatures, there isn’t a kind of presiding story. OVO is a stunningly costumed showcase of pretty breathtaking circus acts. 

The visuals are superb. And what a treat to have a live (and lively) band and singer for the music by Brazilian composer/music director Berna Ceppas. The sound is surprisingly good for a vault like Rogers. And if OVO doesn’t have the theatrical punch of other Cirque shows, it’s great entertainment. And no mosquitoes are involved. 

Please, Cirque, can we have a tent show soon in this theatre town?

REVIEW

OVO

Theatre: Cirque du Soleil

Written, directed, choreographed by: Deborah Colker

Where: Rogers Place

Running: through Sunday

Tickets: cirquedusoleil.com, ticketmaster.ca

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